A stretch of the first highway in the center of Vietnam opened to traffic

A 13-km-long stretch of the first highway between the north and south of the country was inaugurated at a ceremony hosted in August by the Deputy Minister of Transportation, Mr. Le Dinh Tho, outside of the city of Da Nang, located in the central region of Vietnam. This project, financed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency, is set in the larger framework of the North South Expressway construction project, the infrastructure that will eventually link the country’s two most important cities, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh, through a corridor that will connect the country from north to south. In this way, OHL has finalized its first project in this Asian country, where it has had a presence since 2014.

The contract was awarded by the Vietnam Expressway Corporation (VEC) with a budget of 64 million euros and was performed by a Joint Venture led by OHL (40%) with the participation of the local companies,   Cienco 1 (40%) and Dong Mekong (20%). The project consisted of the construction of a 13-km stretch with 10 bridges, extending from the city of Da Nang and crossing through the districts of Thang Binh and Phu Ninh in the province of Quang Nam. 

OHL is also performing the construction of the Niem 2 Bridge in Vietnam, which is a 543.7-meter-long viaduct that includes a central span of 120 meters over the Lánch Tray River and is a part of a four-lane highway accessing the coastal city of Hai Phong. This city is located on the Gulf of Tonkin, in the South China Sea, 120 km east of Hanoi, and is one of Vietnam’s most important commercial ports, with significant industrial activity and trade. The project, with a budget close to 25 million euros, was awarded by the Department of Transportation of the Regional Unit in Hai Phong City and is financed by the World Bank.  

Home markets

OHL carries out its business activity mainly in eight home markets – the U.S. and Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Spain and Central Europe- which, at the close of accounts for the first half of 2017, concentrated 90.6% of its backlog, distributed primarily in the U.S. and Canada (38%), the Pacific Alliance (33.2%), Spain (15.2%) and the Czech Republic (4.2%).

The total construction backlog is placed at close to 6.3 billion euros. Contracting in the first six months of the year amounted to 1.7 billion euros, a figure that represents 74% of the total work contracted in 2016, which was worth 2.3 billion euros.

View of the stretch of the Da Nang-QuangNgai section, built by OHL.