ACCIONA, as a part of the Transcity consortium, is awarded the Northern Link tunnel in Australia for 1,100 million Euros

Brisbane City Council has chosen the proposal from the Spanish company, the Australian construction company BMD Constructions and the Italian company Ghella to build and operate the project on a concession basis.

The Transcity consortium, formed by ACCIONA, BMD Constructions and Ghella, has been chosen by Brisbane City Council to design, construct, operate and maintain the Northern Link Tunnel project for 10 years, within the infrastructures plan of the state of Queensland to improve traffic and connections with the metropolitan areas with the aim of expanding the city. The cost of the project totals 1,500 million Australian Dollars (1,100 million Euros) and is the first contract in the infrastructures area for ACCIONA in Australia.

The Northern Link Tunnel is made up of two parallel tunnels of 12 metres in diameter and approximately 4 kilometres in length which will join the Centenary Motorway with the Inner City Bypass. The construction project and the planning of the works has taken into account the need to guarantee and respect the mobility of public transport, private vehicles and pedestrians in the area, as well as integrating the project in to the city with the appropriate urban designs  to preserve and enhance the importance of the adjacent  Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens.

ACCIONA Australia Country Manager, Brett Thomas, emphasised the satisfaction of the consortium on having been selected for this project and highlighted "the team formed by ACCIONA, BMD and Ghella assures that we have the experience, technical excellence and international level management and maintenance capacity, as well as the knowledge and local commitment that the fact of having a local contractor based in Brisbane gives" In this sense, he stressed "the aim of Transcity is to present a project which is not only a construction icon, but also a reflection of the city's vigour".

The project's key details

It is made up of two twin tubes with two lanes, each one of 4.3 kilometres in length and a diameter of approximately 12 metres which run below the ground at a depth of up to 40 metres.
The construction will require:

• Two tunnel boring machines of 12 metres in diameter, each one being 90 metres long
• The moving of 2 millions tonnes of rock
• 185,000  square metres of asphalt
• 1,200 concrete piles
• 250 ventilators which will allow the renewal of air in the tunnels

About ACCIONA:

ACCIONA is one of the main Ibex 35 companies by market capitalisation with a turnover of 6,512 million Euros in 2009.

The company is world leader in the development, production and management of infrastructures, renewable energy and water.

Globally recognised due to its experience in tunnelling, ACCIONA Infrastructures has built more than 100 kilometres of tunnels in the last ten years, using its 13 immense Tunnel Boring Machines.

In 2008, the company was given the concession for 42 kilometres of the A-30 toll motorway in   Montreal, for 1,280 million Dollars and also built the southern bypass of the M-30 in Madrid. An urban three lane, 4 kilometre tunnel costing 1,400 million Dollars.

In Australia, ACCIONA Energy has built two of the main wind farms and is actively working on obtaining large scale solar energy projects,   including one in Queensland. ACCIONA Agua is part of the consortium which has designed, is building and will operate the first large scale desalination plants close to Adelaide, in Port Stanvac. ACCIONA Agua is also working closely with various Australian administrations to provide water treatment and water management services and is pre-selected for some of the new projects worth more than 850 million Dollars.

About BMD Constructions:

BMD Constructions is a company that belongs to the BMD Group; it has its head office in Brisbane and is dedicated to the construction of infrastructures and buildings. Its annual profits reached a thousand million Dollars and it employs 1,200 people.  BMD operates in the transport, mining, energy and urban development sectors. Its latest projects are the SAFElink in Brisbane worth 870 million Dollars, Sunbury Rail Electrification in Melbourne for 270 million Dollars, the Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal 7X near Macay which totals 100 million Dollars and the extension of the F3 freeway to the north of Sydney for 70 million Dollars.

About Ghella:

Founded in 1894, Ghella is a private company. Among its main business activities are civil engineering and the design of infrastructure projects.

Ghella is a specialist in tunnels and has the capacity and is equipped to design and construct tunnels using mechanical as well as traditional methods.

With more than 70 kilometres of tunnels dug in the last five years, the Ghella project portfolio includes the Puerto Cabello- La Encrucijada railway line, the underground railways lines for the cities of Valencia and Caracas in Venezuela and the Maldonado water tunnel in Buenos Aires.