Ground-breaking digital collaboration

The E18 Rugtvedt-Dørdal project is a very complex multi-disciplinary project, encompassing 26 bridges and other structures, 16.5 km of four-lane motorway, with geotechnical and geo-engineering challenges and a very exciting surface water handling system.

The road project has become a pilot project for inter-disciplinary digital coordination. The project is a turnkey contract, which means that the contractor builds the road while project design and adjustment are ongoing.The project has a very ambitious schedule, so the BIM model has been crucial to being able to look ahead, to ensure that the planners do not create barriers to the contractor’s work in the future.

The model is also an invaluable tool for coordination, because the project group from COWI is working across national borders – in Denmark, India and various Norwegian offices.The tool enables a work process that is efficient, saves time and costs and significantly reduces the likelihood of design errors while supporting effective collaboration and coordination at all stages of planning.

As well as the E18 trunk road, around 77 smaller roads are to be planned and constructed.This means blasting and handling some 3 million cubic metres of material, and moving 1.5 million cubic metres of soil.

The contract for the road improvement to the E18 Rugtvedt-Dørdal section was awarded by the ‘Best Value Procurement’ method.
It was the first time this method had been used on a Norwegian project.