E6 Helgeland Nord
Helgeland Nord is the first of three road construction projects to be implemented in Nordland County, Norway. NGI has been responsible for geotechnical design on assignment from Aas-Jacobsen Trondheim, who is the main consultant to Hæhre Entreprenør AS.
Hæhre Entreprenør is responsible for engineering, building and operating the road for the first 15 years. The contract is the first of its kind with the Norwegian Public Roads Administration and is worth more than NOK 1.9 billion. The construction work will take place in the period 2015-2019.
The current and existing road is narrow and winding, with limited capacity, frost heave problems and frequent crossroads, which leads to inefficient transportation and heavy financial costs. There have been a number of traffic accidents; as many as 40 a year on average for the E6 Helgeland as a whole, two or three of which have been fatal.
The Helgeland Nord project involves the relocation of 3 million cubic metres of soil, 1 tunnel and 23 structures. One of these is Langvassåga, a bridge with three spans to be supported on solid rock, steel pipe foundations and friction-based steel pipes respectively.
There are also geotechnical challenges connected with road cuts and fills. The largest road cut through soil is 45 metres deep.
