Worldwide contracting group, Skanska, has made the most of its international network in order to overcome a skilled labour shortfall for miners for Finnish operator Skanska Tekra Oy’s tunnelling scope on the Vuosaari Harbour Project, in Helsinki.
Skanska said that the booming Finnish tunnelling business meant that it had to deploy 33 skilled blasters, drillers and supervisors from its Slovakian business unit to Skanska Tekra’s contract for the Porvarinlahti road tunnel and the Labbacka railway tunnel to meet demand for extra resources. Hannu Tomperi, development manager of Skanska Tekra’s Rock Construction Unit said: “This cross-border cooperation within the Group is a great help and a new step for us.”
T&TI was told that the contract was worth US$29M. The Porvarinlahti scope consists of twin road tunnels 1,680m long, each is some 10m wide by 9m high, driven parallel at a 10m separation with cross passages at 100m intervals. The Labbacka tunnel is 600m long.
Excavated by drill and blast, the tunnels were designed by Finnmap Infra Oy and Kalliosuunnittelu Oy Rockplan Ltd.
They were the first tunnel contracts to be let for the VUOLI project, the traffic connections for the harbour project in Helsinki being undertaken by the Finnish state and the City of Helsinki.
The routes have been planned as a single entity with the aim of creating smooth connections from the harbour to the national road and rail network. Planning the land traffic connections as one is said to have optimised solutions from the perspective of total costs and environmental impacts.
A nearby nature reserve places restrictions on how the work can be carried out. Tomperi said: “It’s fantastic to see a skillful team with experience from demanding tunnel projects in Italy and Germany. They’re doing painstaking work based on detailed technical documentation, and we’ve learned a lot from them.”
By 1 January, 93% of the Porvarinlahti tunnels had been completed.
