- Today the highway, inaugurated by the Crown Princess of Denmark, officially opens to traffic
- The €133 million project, involving the design and construction of an 8.2 km highway, includes a bridge over Roskilde Fjord
ACCIONA, along with partners Besix and Rizanni de Eccher, today opens the Roskilde Fjord highway in Denmark to traffic. The official inauguration took place on September 28th. The event, organised by the Danish Roads Directorate of the Ministry of Transport, was attended by the Danish Crown Princess, Mary Elizabeth Donaldson. In her honour, the infrastructure was renamed the “Crown Princess Mary’s Bridge”.
During the inauguration, the Danish Road Directorate highlighted the important work carried out by the consortium: “RBAI JV have since the tender process and during the whole construction period acted as a professional contractor for the employer. The collaboration was carried out in a good tone and with full satisfaction. We would like to thank the representatives for the three companies in the RBAI JV for their contribution to achieving such a tremendous result at the Fjord Link project. It is a spectacular project which will benefit the Danish society for many years to come.”
The works to construct this bridge, located in one of Denmark’s most emblematic regions, have taken 34 months to complete and finished three months ahead of schedule. The infrastructure represents the first segmental bridge to be constructed in the country since 1970.
The €133 million project, awarded in October 2016 to ACCIONA and its two partners, Besix and Rizanni de Eccher, consisted of designing and constructing an 8.2 km toll highway with four lanes (two in each direction), with a 1.36 km concrete bridge over Roskilde Fjord between Marbaekvej and Torslev Hage in Denmark.
This bridge, with 15 spans between piles located 83 metres apart and 2 spans of 57 metres, was constructed using the progressive cantilever technique, launching precast beams. The foundations of the bridge consist of 52 piles, up to two metres in diameter and 50 metres long. A total of 492 precast sections were used to construct the bridge using the joined segmental system with each segment weighing around 100 tonnes. These were precast in Poland by Mostostal, an ACCIONA subsidiary, and transported to Denmark by sea.
In addition to the bridge over Roskilde Fjord, the highway has eleven other smaller structures including bridges, wildlife passes and a cycle lane, as well as a kilometre of retaining wall and a three-kilometre acoustic barrier.
Workers from more than 20 nations worked on this project, which is ACCIONA’s first contract in Denmark.
The social and environmental demands were one of the top priorities on the project, both for ACCIONA and its partners, and for the client, as the highway crosses various protected areas, including a zone that is part of the EU’s Natura 2000 network and home to some of Europe’s most valuable and threatened species.
The design of the bridge was therefore optimised to reduce the number of piles in the fjord to protect the aquatic environment, as well as opting for construction methods that would reduce the pollution risk as much as possible.
This highly technical and complex project carried out in a uniquely challenging environment has been successfully delivered thanks to the outstanding collaboration and the close and continuous dialogue between the client and the partners in the joint-venture.
For ACCIONA, the highway over Roskilde Fjord is the first contract its Infrastructure division has carried out in Denmark. This will strengthen the company’s presence in the region, where it is currently the lead contractor on the Follo Line project, the largest railway project in Norway. The contract is worth more than €1 billion and includes the construction of an 18 km tunnel, the longest of its kind in Scandinavia, which will connect the city of Oslo and the town of Ski.