Week of 20 February
1. Full speed on two iconic buildings in Abu Dhabi (U.A.E.)
Our Abu Dhabi colleagues are working hard! On the iconic Zayed National Museum project, the full steel arch of wing five is now in place. This is the highest wing culminating at +123 metres. The have also started the de-propping of wing two and are at 30% of the cladding of the pods (which contain the galleries). The first glass fiber reinforced concrete panels have been placed and the first trees have been planted in the Time Line Garden!
At the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim Museum, the plinth has been completed, including the level one slab and the core walls, and the steel structure is starting at full power. The steel structure for the first gallery is already completed and MEP and façade works have started.
Great job, team!
2. VIP visits to the Rail Baltica Central Station project (Latvia)
A few days ago, the Minister of Transportation of Latvia, Janis Vitenbergs, visited the Rail Baltica Central Station site and witnessed the steady progress of the works.
On 7 and 8 February, a progress meeting between the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency and Rail Baltica management was held in Riga to review the global project’s implementation progress. On this occasion, the representatives also visited the Rail Baltica Central Station site, together with RB Rail, EDZL and the Latvian, Estonian, and Lithuanian ministries of transport.
3. Water under control (Cameroon)
Mid February our colleagues in Cameroon reached a major milestone at the Nachtigal hydropower project as the first cofferdams were lowered in the spillway openings of the dam. These spillways are structures used to provide the controlled release of water downstream during floods. In the pictures and video below you can measure the extent of these works in progress!
The Nachtigal project is located on the Sanaga River, 65 km north of Yaoundé. In partnership with French company NGE and Moroccan company SGTM, BESIX is taking part in developing the dam and hydro-electric station, which will have a production capacity of 420 MW.
4. Nose disassembly has begun at the A16 site in Rotterdam (The Netherlands)
At the A16 ‘De Groene Boog’ building site in Rotterdam, a very intriguing process has begun. One of the masterpieces of the project is a 400-metre long flyover viaduct that passes over a railway line and a motorway interchange. As closing these busy traffic lines was out of question, the project consortium decided to apply a state-of-the-art ‘incremental launching method’ for building the viaduct, using what is called a ‘launching nose’.
Just over a year after the first segment of the viaduct deck A was launched, the final (and 17th segment) has been pushed in place, allowing the gradually disassembly of the nose.
The launching nose is the impressive blue metal structure you can see in the pictures below and in this video. It is installed at the front of the viaduct segment to balance out the weight equally and limit the internal stresses.
Next steps? Do it all over again on deck B, in the other direction! Good luck, teams!
If you want to know more about the incremental launching method, click on this link: The essential role of BESIX Engineering in the A16 project in Rotterdam - BESIX
And then this...
A heavy lift luffing crane, the M2480D, the world’s largest capacity tower crane, will operate at the Kangaroo Point Green Bridge project. Watch this huge lifting structure in this video!