• The 23-kilometre section of road includes eight bridges and four tunnels

Nye Veier, Norway's state-owned road planning, construction, operation and maintenance company, has chosen ACCIONA Construction to design and build the section of the E6 highway between Ranheim and Værnes in the Trondheim Region.

The project, with a budget of approximately 4 billion Norwegian kroner (€410 million), involves designing and building a four-lane 23-kilometre section of highway, 8 kilometres of which will run underground through four tunnels measuring between 1 and 4 kilometres in length.

The road, which will include eight bridges, runs partly along the route of the existing road, except for the tunnels, which will be dug parallel to the existing ones. By installing a four-lane highway in place of the existing two-lane road, the project will enhance mobility in the north of Trøndelag County.

Work is due to begin in mid-2019 and is to be completed in 2024. Until the road is re-inaugurated, ACCIONA Construction will also be responsible for traffic management and building temporary detours to maintain traffic flow between the two towns.

ACCIONA expanding in Norway

ACCIONA is already working in Norway to build the Follo Line railway tunnels, in a project worth €1 billion. ACCIONA Construction, in consortium with Italian company Ghella, is building twin tunnels 18.5 kilometres in length to link the cities of Oslo and Ski in what is the largest railway project in Norway's history.

The two tunnels, which will be the longest in Norway, are being dug with four tunnel boring machines (TBM) running simultaneously.

The tunnel work also includes an underground rescue area, caverns for assembling the TBMs, emergency tunnels, an evacuation tunnel 2,711 metres long, and two transport tunnels each measuring 400 metres in length.

Opportunities in the Norwegian market

The Transport Plan that the Norwegian government approved in 2017, which aims to build a more modern transport system to meet future demand, has a budget of 993 billion kroner (around €97 billion) for public works, particularly roads, railways and coastal infrastructure.

As a tangential objective, the Transport Plan seeks to improve all infrastructures' resilience to adverse weather conditions and to reduce CO2 emissions by transitioning to a more sustainable transport system that uses less fossil fuels. Those are also strategic priorities in ACCIONA's construction methods.

Caption:
Pablo García Caramés, Financial Manager, ACCIONA Construction
Juan Amaury Gil Gandía, SBU Director Roads, Bridges & Special Structures Business Unit, ACCIONA Construction
Ingrid Dahl Hovland, CEO, Nye Veier
Johan Arnt Vatnan, SVP, Project Director E6 Trøndelag, Nye Veier