7 OF THE MOST IMPRESSIVE ENGINEERING PROJECTS IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW
Around the world, mind-blowing engineering and infrastructure projects are underway. As huge tunnels are being excavated under our feet and colossal bridges are engineered to span greater distances than ever before above our heads, CCL takes a look at some of the most impressive engineering projects in the world right now...
Panama Canal Expansion, Panama
Project: 11 years at a cost of £4 billion
Completed in June this year, the canal expansion project opened up a 3.8-mile-long channel for new locks. A staggering 4.4 million cubic metres of concrete were used to make the canal wider and deeper in order to accommodate modern, super-sized ships.
Source: Canal de Panamá
Jubail Industrial City, Saudi Arabia
Project: 10 years at a cost of £8.5 billion
This city never sleeps – or stops growing. Since the 70s, Jubail has continually evolved through the ethos of ‘sand-up’ construction. Multibillion-dollar industrial investment has produced eight blocks of industrial plants, four blocks of aluminium and other smelting plants erected over four phases of engineering. Gigantic ‘landscaping’ involved the removal of hills, tunnel building, the expansion of fibreoptics, and the building of highways. The project uses seawater for daily, sustainable cooling.
Source: Royal Commission for Jubail & Yanbu
London Crossrail, London
Project: 11 years at a cost of £17.8 billion
England’s capital has always ‘grown out of itself’, but more noticeably, under itself too. In this particular project eight tunneling machines ploughed through 26 miles of London’s subterrain, making way for new underground track that will link 40 stations—including 10 brand-new interchanges.
Source: © Crossrail Ltd
Russky Bridge, Russia
Project: 4 years at a cost of £775 million
A total of 3,100 metres long, with 168 cable stays stretching from pylons that stand at a height of 320 metres. The numbers are impressive enough, but the spectacle of this bold construction is what really earns this bridge a place in our top 7. The middle channel of this three-part bridge is all but equal to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, with the longest of its cables being almost 580 metres.
Etihad Rail, United Arab Emirates
Project: £8.5 billion
Speed meets style in the UAE, as this project looks set to make rail the fastest and most straightforward way to navigate the country. Over three phases the Etihad Rail project aims to connect 745 miles of new rail to link with new destinations in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
Source: Etihad Rail
State Route 520 Floating Bridge, Seattle
Project: 5 years at a cost of £1.5 billion
Concrete…floating? In Seattle, anything is possible as a 2,350-metre-long floating bridge claims the title of the longest in the world. The new State Route 520 bridge floats across Lake Washington, connecting Seattle to the east.
Silver Line, Washington, D.C.
Project: 8 years at a cost of £5.2 billion
Phase 1 of this project saw 11.7 miles of new track and five new stations added to the Silver Line - one of the most complex transportation projects in the country - in 2014. Since then, another 11.4 miles of track and six new stations have been delivered, including an essential, life-improving connection to the hard-to-reach Washington Dulles International Airport.
As part of the development, CCL was awarded the post-tensioning material contract on the BLVD apartment block and Metro garage facility, adjacent to the Silver Line Reston Metro Station. The garage is the largest underground car park on the east coast of the United States and features 3,500+ parking spaces and a full-service bus depot. The BLVD building is located directly above the garage and has 450 luxury residential units, consisting of 58,000 square metres of 8-level elevated parking decks and 13 levels of residential slabs above. After the success of phase 1, CCL was awarded the contract for the second phase of the project.
Source: Dulles Metro