OHL exports its RDI innovation: the Cubipod

The OHL Group has exported the Cubipod, one of the company’s RDI developments, to Algeria for the construction of the main armor layer of mound breakwaters which has already been successfully used in Spain on the Punta Langosteira breakwater in A Coruña, at the port in Malaga and at the port of La Esfinge on Gran Canaria island.

The Cubipod is going to be used for the very first time outside of Spain at the Marina Bay d’Alger for the construction of a dock with a capacity for 711 berths which will able to take several types of ships, ranging from 8 to 180 meters. In this project, OHL will be providing technical advisory in its design and construction. Besides Algeria, OHL is studying implementing the Cubipod on some of its home markets, such as the United States, Mexico, Peru or Chile and also in other South Atlantic and Pacific countries.

OHL is managing the collection of royalties generated by the use of the Cubipod by third parties and is the exclusive patent licensee. The company will collect payment for the use of this technological innovation by the cubic meter manufactured after having reached a sublicense agreement with the algerian company SPA Dahli, the project developer, for the use of Cubipods, which will entail the use of more than 20,000 m³ of concrete for their manufacture.

The Cubipod has been developed in collaboration with the Universidad Politécnica of Valencia and provides some major advantages over the conventional cubic block, such as its great robustness and structural strength, whilst it also offsets the disadvantages of cubic blocks by preventing face-to-face coupling and increasing friction with the underlayer. All this, added to its being easy to manufacture, handle, install and store, the savings on materials and costs involved in their use and the reduction of the carbon footprint.

This technological innovation has been awarded outstanding recognitions such as those given by the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva,  the National Award to Innovations in the category of Innovative Public Procurement given by the Malaga Port Authority or the García-Cabrerizo Award to Spanish Invention.

Other successful experiences

In the civil engineering field, OHL focuses its RDI activities on the development of innovative construction elements such as the Cubipod and on the improvement of its own processes, in which it implements cutting-edge technologies. In this regard, it already has successful experiences in employing aerospace technology in its construction processes, one of the most outstanding of which is the use of drones.

OHL is the first spanish construction firm to be legally qualified by the Air Safety Agency to carry out scientific work and photogrammetry with unmanned aerial vehicles or RPAs. The company used these devices for the first time in the work done on the La Aldea-El Risco project carried out on Gran Canaria island in 2009, thus having been a pioneer in using these devices in the field of surveying.

This line of work has fostered RDI projects being carried out, such as SOGEDRON (Soluciones GEomáticas con DRON), co-financed by the Center for Industrial Technical Development, which has enabled OHL to perfectly hone the entire manual procedure for obtaining mapping products by means of automating the flight plan and obtaining digital models of the terrain and orthophotos of centimeter-level precision.

Cubipods on the breakwater at Langosteira Port, A Coruña, Spain.