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Tyne tunnel contract awarded
10 Jul 2008
Volker Stevin Marine has been awarded a £16m contract to manufacture, transport and submerge the tunnel units for the new Tyne Tunnel in the UK.
Tunnel sections will be built in drydock and floated down the Tyne.
Main contractor Bouygues Travaux Public awarded the contract to the company, which will start work on the construction of the concrete tunnel units this summer at a dry dock in Wallsend in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Volker Stevin Marine is no stranger to facilitating crossings of the Tyne, having built the Gateshead Millennium Bridge and the South Shields Ferry Terminal. It will use immersed tube engineering techniques for the contract, involving construction of four 90m long split sections of rectangular pre-cast and reinforced concrete tunnelling, which are 8.5m by 15m.
The tunnel sections will be built in the dry dock before being floated down the Tyne adjacent to the existing tunnel where they are expected to be submerged in the autumn of 2009.
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