Ferreries bypass in January 2009

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Work scheduled to start on the Ferreries bypass in January 2009

The Councillor for Mobility, Damià Borràs, has announced that work on the long-awaited Ferreries bypass could start in mid January next year.

The Island Council has approved the continuation of the appropriation order issued by the Balearic Government to obtain the land necessary for the project, the cost of which is around 35 million euros and is to be financed by the Ministry for Public Works and Buildings through the Road Plan.

c.m.w.- Maó read more...

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Work on Ferreries bypass could start next February

The Island Council received a million euros in March from the State Government as a deposit towards the payments to expropriate the land needed for the Ferreries bypass project. The sum represents approximately half the total cost of the scheme.

Some 163,342 sq.m. of land belonging to 20 properties are to be compulsorily purchased, affecting 15 landowners, and 500 sq.m. of buildings (mainly barns) will be demolished together with 5,800 metres of dry stone wall.

The Government restarted the expropriation process at the start of this year after it had been halted in summer 2004 and assumed ownership of the land in August.

Once the Island Council receives the finance for the project it estimates that work on the bypass could start around February.

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Ferreries bypass to be started in January

Contracts for the work on the Ferreries bypass should be awarded before the end of this year, allowing earth removal to start in January. The 32.3 million euro project should be completed within 18 months.

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Delay in awarding contract for bypass

A total of nine tenders were received from parties interested in constructing the long-awaited Ferreries bypass, each of which is from a temporary amalgamation of companies (UTE) due to the project’s magnitude and the technical difficulties involved. The tenders for the project were studied in depth by a committee and each was awarded points. The offer which received the most points (94.75 out of a possible 100) was that tendered by the UTE of COPCISA and Climent Olives which was for 18,463,863.81 euros, 33.58% less than the target cost of 27,798,650.73 euros.

However, the contract has not yet been awarded to the winning bidders, the Councillor for Transport, Damià Borràs, explaining that the two companies will have to provide reports justifying their ability to carry out the project with viability guaranteed.

Two other UTE’s bidding for the contract may also be asked to provide evidence that their proposals are sound and viable, as their tenders also substantially undercut the price set; ACCIONA/Melchor Mascaró and Dragados/Gomila/Mora whose offers were 32.81% and 30.95% lower respectively.

Such reassurances are normally required when a bid is more than 10% below the average of the other bids, leading to concern that the standard of work and quality of material may be compromised. In the case of the Ferreries bypass, however, the Island Council, insisted on this percentage being reduced to 4%.

Borràs stated that the COPCISA/Climent Olives project was technically “good” but that the UTE had presented a “very aggressive” bid which, legally, had to be justified even if this did complicate the procedure. He estimated that the resulting delay would be less than two weeks.

The Island Council’s legal and technical services will assess the information provided by the three bidders and the committee will then decide whether or not to re-evaluate the tenders.

Over 6 million euros, 20% of the total cost of the bypass, will go on building the tunnel which will connect the roads to Sant Patrici and Cala Galdana, the first tunnel of its kind to be constructed in Menorca.

According to the Island Council’s engineer, Josep Darnés, the tunnel is necessary as the alternative would have been to cut through the mountain which would have had a far greater visual impact.

The length of the tunnel has been reduced from the original 200 metres to 170 and it will be 15 metres wide and 9 metres high measuring from the road surface to the top of the arch.

There will be three lanes, two in the direction of Ciutadella and one heading for Maó, each of which will be 3.5 metres wide, with a hard shoulder of 1 metre on either side of the roadway for safety reasons.

The construction of the tunnel will have to be carried out by a specialist team of workers and, although it is hoped that the construction of the bypass will provide work for local companies, the tunnel is one aspect of the project that will probably require outside expertise.

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GOB proposes animal underpasses on Ferreries bypass

In order to ensure that hedgehogs and other small animals can cross the road safely, the ecological group, GOB, is proposing that underpasses be built along the new Ferreries bypass. This relatively cheap measure is used in the majority of European countries where it has proved successful in safeguarding wildlife.

In addition to building tunnels under the road at 500 metre intervals, the group would like to see some sort of barriers installed along the road, preventing small animals from being able to cross the highway.

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More problems in awarding contract for Ferreries bypass

Residents in Ferreries and motorists travelling from one end of the island to the other will have to wait even longer for the bypass around the town which was first proposed some 25 years ago, despite the fact that the project has been put out to tender.

The first problem arose when three bidders put in tenders for amounts which were well below the estimated cost of 27.8 million euros, leading to fears that they would be unable to fulfill their part of the deal or would have to use products of inferior quality to stay within budget.

The consortium which submitted the lowest price, COPCISA-Climent Olives, was asked to show that the work could indeed be completed for over 9 million euros less than the estimated price tag and a similar request was made to the two consortiums with the next lowest tenders, Acciona-Melchor Mascaró and Dragados-Gomila. The documents supplied by the three bidders is currently being studied by the Island Council’s Technical Services Department.

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Ferrovial-Illes Balears win contract for Ferreries bypass

The President of the Island Council, Marc Pons, and the Councillor for Transport, Damià Borràs, announced last week that the contract for the Ferreries bypass had been awarded to Ferrovial Agroman and Concessiones y Contratas Illes Balears, S.L. The two companies, which have formed a temporary partnership for the duration of the contract, put in a quote of 21,324.448 euros (excluding I.V.A.) for the project, a figure that was 23% lower than the initial guide price.

The decision to accept the Ferrovial-Illes Balears tender was made by the contracting committee after it had analysed three lower offers, presented by COPCISA-Climent Olives, Acciona-Melchor Mascaró and Dragados-Antonio Gomila and Juan Mora, and concluded that the quotes were “disproportionately” low and could put the project’s viability at risk.

Marc Pons showed his satisfaction that the long-awaited project, “the biggest civil work ever awarded by the Council”, was finally on the move. Although considering it too early to set a definite timetable for the project, the President hoped that work would begin at Easter and that, with a completion date of 16 months, the bypass would open at the end of summer 2011.

Damià Borràs was questioned about the possibility of a cost overrun on the project, such as has happened with the Ciutadella jetty which was another of Ferrovial’s projects. He explained that the authorities were protected in this instance as both the project and the work were the responsibility of the company winning the contract, so any errors would be theirs, with no margin for claiming deficiencies in a project which they had drawn up themselves.

One of the two companies which will build the bypass is a firm based in Alaior, Concessiones y Contratas Illes Balears. A relatively new entity formed only five years ago, the company obtained an undertaking from Ferrovial, when entering into the temporary partnership, that local companies would be subcontracted for the project wherever possible so that the construction of the bypass would bring further benefits to the island. Obviously, the exception to this stipulation would be any work requiring specialist skills that are not available in Menorca.

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The temporary partnership of Ferrovial Agroman and Illes Balears, which won the contract to construct the Ferreries bypass, has set aside 5.2 million euros for labour costs. It is calculated that the project will generate 406 jobs directly and another 731 indirectly.

Although preparatory work has started, construction on the 24.7 million euro project will not begin until the summer and is expected to take until the end of 2011 to complete.

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Advancing one metre every four hours

A new Austrian tunnelling method, using the geological tension of the rock, is being employed to create a passage through the hill on the future Ferreries bypass and is bearing fruit. The tunnel is growing at the steady pace of one metre every four hours, with one-quarter of the eventual length having already been excavated.

Some 60 people are employed directly or indirectly on this phase of the ambitious project, the majority of them specialists in their field. The speed at which the tunnel is currently progressing is attributed to the rock being less hard than anticipated, although there is no guarantee that this will continue to be the case.

Rodrigo del Pozo, one of the men in charge of the work, explained that the finished tunnel will be 252 metres in length, 170 metres of which will be excavated and the remainder a “false” tunnel which will allow the landscape to be restored. The curve of the tunnel will have a radius of 1,000 metres and a slope of 3%. When completed, the tunnel will carry two lanes of traffic in the direction of Ciutadella and one heading towards Maó.

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Daylight shows through far end of the Ferreries tunnel

Work is progressing well on the island’s most ambitious construction project to date, the tunnel on the Ferreries bypass. Shortly after midday last Wednesday the excavators broke through the far end of the tunnel, allowing daylight to flood through its 252 metre length. Political figures were on hand to raise a celebratory glass of cava with the site workers. Referring to the breakthrough, the President of the Island Council, Marc Pons, stated “we are on the point of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel”.

It is estimated that the excavation work, for which a modern Austrian system has been used, will be completed by the beginning of March and that the tunnel will be ready for use in June. The whole bypass project is estimated to be between 30% and 35% complete and should be finished by the end of the year, bringing an end to a 30-year wait for residents in Ferreries for an alternative route which would avoid the dangerous bottleneck on the Me-1 as it passes through the town.

The tunnel, which will carry three lanes of traffic each 3.5 metres wide (two heading towards Ciutadella and one to Maó), plus the 4.5 kilometres of bypass, has a price tag of 21.3 million euros (excluding IVA).