Inauguration of the highway linking the airport and port of Gdansk

On 24 April, section 4 of the Slovakian Route was inaugurated, with a budget of more than 220 million euros. This highway links the Walessa airport in Gdansk with the city port, considered to be Eastern Europe’s main connection point.

The project, awarded by the Infrastructure Investment Management Company (GIK) of the City Council of Gdansk, has involved executing a 2.4 km section of the ringroad surrounding the city of Gdansk; of interest is the construction of two twin tunnels under the mouth of the River Vistula in the Baltic Sea, 1.1 km long, using a TBM (Tunnel Boring Machine). With this execution, OHL has become the first Spanish company to undertake tunnel excavation work under a river’s navigation canal, using a hydroshield tunnel boring machine, with an excavating diameter of 12.60 meters.

The opening act was attended, amongst other authorities, by the mayor of Gdansk, Paweł Adamowicz, the former Minister of Transportation, Sławomir Nowak, and the former Minister of Privatization, Janusz Lewandowski, currently a European Parliament member. On behalf of OHL, the manager of the Europe area of OHL Construcción, José Pont, was present; as well as the territorial manager of OHL Construcción in Poland, José Miguel Fernández Remesal, and the project’s works manager, Oleksiy Pryadko, amongst others. During the inauguration day, the tunnel was visited by 10,000 cyclists and 40,000 pedestrians, who were able to visit the tunnel before being opened to traffic.

The OHL Group, present in Poland since 2011, has completed various projects there, to include the construction of the Stadion Miejski soccer stadium in Bialystok, modernization of a section in the Kraków-Rzeszów line, and reconstruction of the Rondo Kaponiera intersection in Poznan.

Prizes and awards

During construction of both tunnels under the River Vistula, OHL’s team has received numerous awards, such as first prize in the 2012 and 2014 Safe Construction competition, granted by the Regional Employment Inspectorate in the Polish region of Pomerania; first prize in the urban works category, at the VII edition of the Potencia Prizes for Public Works Machinery and Civil Engineering 2013, held by the Potencia magazine and the Spanish publishing group TPI, recognizing its application of innovating, efficient and environmentally-friendly solutions.

Tunnel under the River Vistula, in Gdansk. Poland.