InfraStructures - November 2013 - Linden Comansa at the "Ruta del Sol"

Linden Comansa at the "Ruta del Sol"

To promote the competitiveness of Colombia and improve the country’s infrastructure, the Colombian Government has declared of strategic importance up to 11 roads. Among all of them stands out the Ruta del Sol (Route of the Sun), a highway with a length of 1,071 km which will bring nearer the cities of the interior of the country, including the capital, Bogota, with Barranquilla, one of the main ports in the Caribbean. The project, one of the most ambitious in Latin America, has a budget of more than $2,5 billion and will reduce the car journey between Bogota and Barranquilla from the current 18 hours to just 10.

Helios Consortium, formed by CAS, IECSA, ConConcreto and CSS Constructores, has been chosen to manage and build the Sector 1 of the Ruta del Sol. This is the shortest of the three stretches that make up the highway, but also the most complex, since it will cross the Colombian part of the Andes range, a very mountainous area with many rivers and gorges. Therefore this sector, only 78 km in length, will feature nearly 3 km of tunnels and up to 6 km of bridges and viaducts.

For the construction of the bridges, the consortium has 6 Linden Comansa tower cranes, operated by Gigacon, Linden Comansa’s official distributor in Colombia since 2010. These tower cranes, a 21LC400 18 t, two 21LC210 18 t, a LC5211 5 t, a 10LC140 8 t and another crane of the same model that is about to arrive at the jobsite, are responsible for building a total of 7 bridges on this section, so when they end up on a bridge, they are disassembled, transported and erected again at another point to start with another bridge. Due to the demanding work schedule, some of these cranes work in a double shift, always responding very efficiently.

“One of the biggest difficulties we have faced was the transportation to the rural area of the Magdalena Medio, which is crossed by this Sector 1 of the "Route of the Sun,” says Fabio Cañón, sales and technical director at Gigacon. “It is a rather rugged and unpopulated area, 100 km away from Bogota, and the current road doesn’t precisely meet the best conditions. For the erection of the crane we couldn’t count with heavy mobile cranes, but thanks to the lightweight of the tower crane’s sections, we were able to erect them spending a little more time than the usual. In addition, the high temperatures in the area (32 °C is the annual average) added another problem to our team’s list when doing all the assembly works.”

Gigacon is also responsible for the technical support and maintenance tasks on the cranes at the jobsite. Due to the distance to any urban location, Gigacon has a permanent maintenance team at the jobsite, able to quickly respond to any electrical, mechanical or equipment maintenance problem.

Gigacon also managed the training of the crane operators, staff selected from among the inhabitants of the area in an example of social responsibility from Helios Consortium. Gigacon has over 35 years of experience in the sector of construction and load lifting, and owns one of Colombia’s most important fleets of cranes and lifting.

Source: Linden Comansa

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