Bilfinger Berger - Construction

Bilfinger Berger is designing, financing and building what is currently the largest road transport project in Scotland: Near Glasgow the company is transforming an overloaded road into a motorway and will subsequently operate it for 30 years.

It is already 8:30 pm when Alan Thompson, Traffic Manager from Bilfinger Berger, and Police Officer Ted Murray bend over the plans on the desk in Thompson’s office. At the end of a long day, they play out situations that will only become reality in several weeks.

“At this new on-ramp, drivers are going to be traveling at high speeds when they reach the construction site”, says Thompson, concerned. The Police Officer thinks about it. “It’s not going to work without a set of traffic lights”, he says. “But they have to be taken down again as quickly as possible.” Traffic in Scotland’s densely populated Central Belt should be exposed to as few disruptions as possible – regardless of the construction work for a major project. The police have assigned Murray to the M80 project. Together with specialists from Bilfinger Berger, he works out lane changes, plans speed limits and the locations of traffic signs. “Together we maneuver nearly 80,000 vehicles safely and as fluidly as possible through the construction site every day”, says Thompson with a sense of pride.

Bilfinger Berger is removing an 18-kilometer long bottleneck near Glasgow. Only here, between the towns of Stepps and Haggs, is the M80 motorway not yet completed. Thousands of vehicles squeeze their way along the old road on a daily basis. Ten kilometers are now being expanded to six lanes with a further eight kilometers of new construction.

In an initial step, 1.5 million cubic meters of earth needs to be moved – enough to fill Wembley Stadium to the roof. More than 400,000 tons of asphalt is to be laid and more than 60 civil engineering structures – including ten bridges – are to be built. A detailed logistics planning is one of the key challenges of the project. “Without Bilfinger Berger’s technical expertise and experience, it would be impossible to carry out a construction order of this size”, explains Project Manager Roger Whiston. And: traffic has to flow, two lanes in each direction. “While we’re producing one lane, traffic zooms past at 60 kilometers an hour in the next lane.” No wonder that during the construction period, 19,000 traffic cones, 2,300 warning lights and 16 kilometers of temporary guard rails are required to control the flow of traffic.

There are dozens of project protagonists, each of which wants to be consulted, informed and directed: government specialists, citizens’ groups, subcontractors and the 700 employees on the project. Work has to be adapted to a wide range of requirements – including those of local residents. Night shifts are only approved in exceptional cases. “The key is to move the project forward with a great deal of sensitivity, but also purposefully”, explains the Project Manager.

The final section of the M80 has to be completed by the end of 2011 according to the contract which, with all of the details, fills ten large ring binders. For Bilfinger Berger, this motorway section is an important investment in a public private partnership. The company is making an equity commitment of more than €23 million in the project, which has a total investment volume of about €350 million. For the Scottish government, the project represents much more than the 15 minutes of driving time that will be saved by the expansion. “An effective transportation system is essential to increase productivity and to create sustainable growth”, says Stewart Stevenson, Scotland’s former Minister of Transport. In return for making the motorway available and operating it, Bilfinger Berger receives a contractually fixed sum from Scotland’s public purse for a period of 30 years beginning in September 2011.

But at the moment, engineers still rule the construction site. Site Manager Carsten Künning is responsible for coordinating which parts of the motorway are to receive the daily delivery of up to 4,000 tons of asphalt. The fourth and final layer is being put down on a new lane: the surface layer is just a few centimeters thick and is characterized by the particularly fine aggregate of the bitumen utilized. “This is like painting cars”, raves Künning. “The last step in the process is what makes the whole thing shine.” A truck fills the container of a road paver with the black mixture. Spirals inside the machine transport the asphalt to the back where it is applied to the road with an extreme level of precision. A worker checks the temperature: 172 degrees Celsius. The freshly-laid surface makes a noise like popcorn in a microwave. Künning reaches into his pocket and looks for a penny in his wallet before throwing the coin in front of the road paver. “That should bring luck” he says, laughing.

(Text: Jan Rübel, Photos: Frank Schultze)