Kosovo motorway wins IRF award

Kosovo’s Route 7 Motorway is an 84km dual carriage motorway that will span Kosovo from the southwest border with Albania to the capital city of Pristina, tying the heart of Kosovo to the Albanian port city of Durres. This motorway is part of the pan-European motorway network for Southeast Europe and provides a key trade corridor. In November 2011, 4138 Bechtel-5252 Enka General Partnership (BEGP) successfully delivered 38km to the people of Kosovo, only 19 months after the contract award. The second main achievement came in November 2012 when a further 18.4km of motorway was opened after only 8 months of construction. BEGP is proud to have delivered this ‘fast track’ motorway while maintaining a high level of both safety and quality.

There were three major obstacles to be overcome upon contract signing in April 2010. The first obstacle was that the final design was not complete. With construction needing to start almost immediately to deliver the first three sections within the client’s required timeframe, BEGP had to begin construction while working in parallel with the designer to manage the delivery of the design to support these construction activities on site. The second obstacle was that while the expropriation process was underway, the government had not yet taken the final decision and therefore had not expropriated any of the land for construction. BEGP worked closely with the client’s expropriation teams to expedite the process in order of priority, so that major structures and areas of large excavation on the project's critical path could begin immediately. The third obstacle was the long and very cold winter weather conditions.

Staffing a major Infrastructure project is always a key challenge success. In total, BEGP trained 3733 individuals from 14 different countries including an unskilled majority from the local Kosovo community. The project also implemented a “buddy” system whereby employees who have been on the project less than 90 days are given a different color helmet and work closely with more experienced members of the team to ensure their safety on site and the quality of their product.

In order to maintain the required high quality standards and in addition to the craft training program, BEGP developed 172 procedures within the first 6 months of work. Development of the Quality Management System (QMS) was jointly completed by the Quality and Construction Departments with input from all department leads to ensure completeness.

The Kosovo Motorway Project won the 2012 Global Road Achievement Award for Program Management. Visit the 2462 IRF website for additional GRAA information, including how to enter a project into the 2013 competition.

Are you up for the challenge?

Since their launch, the IRF GRAAs have provided global notoriety to over 100 projects in 30 countries and highlighted how road programs help achieve broader development goals. The IRF is now taking applications across 11 categories. The deadline for submitting an entry is June 30, 2013.

Find out more online at %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 oLinkExternal www.irfnews.org/awards www.irfnews.org/awards false http://www.irfnews.org/awards false false%> or contact: Magid Elabyad at %$Linker: 2 Email <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 oLinkEmail [email protected] [email protected] false mailto:[email protected] true false%> or +1 703 535 10012914