After approval by the regional administrative office in Saxony was granted following a four-month delay, the construction work for this project finally started in October 2015. As usual, unscheduled preparation works had to be carried out first, such as archaeological trial trenches and the examination of areas of potential concern to guarantee the absence of explosive ordnance.
In November 2015, the Schwarze Elster river had already been crossed by means of a modified microtunneling procedure using our construction sections in a joint venture with MAX STREICHER GmbH & Co. KG aA. The execution of these four DN 800 product pipe crossings was one of the main preconditions for the high-pressure test on the double DN 800 pipe scheduled for the beginning of June this year. The main work on our eastern construction section, which has a length of 13,500 m, began in March 2016 with front-end welding. The partially mechanical MAG welding procedure was used for this work.
In addition to routine day-to-day operations, these “throw-in” tasks sometimes pose a real challenge. They can range from the completion of individual construction sections ahead of schedule to the installation of additional DN 800 inverted siphons and the re-routing of third party routes. The construction of 2 pig trap stations including branch valve units and the laying of the cable conduit systems are count as predictable and normal in this context.
There are currently 131 industrial and 6 office employees working on the implementation of this construction project. Inspection work on the laid pipeline route will start in June. After the caliper pigging is carried out successfully, the last tie-in will be finished on the 10th of August 2016 and the ONTRAS will then be able to put this section into operation.