Lusail Expressway bags Global Best Project ENR Award

Lusail Expressway has won the 6th annual Global Best Project ENR 2018 award by Engineering News-Record (ENR), a reputed engineering and construction industry magazine, in the Road/Highway category.

Global Best Projects identifies and honours the project teams behind outstanding design and construction efforts of the past year.

“The judges picked a diverse set of 22 projects hailing from 14 different countries and every continent but Antarctica. These outstanding examples show the risks, rewards and hurdles overcome when designing and building internationally,” ENR said on their website.

“The judges looked at projects in many markets and examined safety performance, innovations, challenges, and design and construction quality – with a special emphasis on the diversity of global project teams and their collaboration. They also considered how the project benefits the local community and/or the construction industry.”

Lusail Expressway project includes the arches at Interchange 5/6, which are the biggest and tallest monument in Qatar with a height of 100 metres and width of 147 metres. It weighs more than 9,300 tonnes of steel.

Located in a vital area, Lusail Expressway connects Doha with Lusail City and many public destinations like the Pearl in the north, Katara, Diplomatic Area and a big number of residential areas, hotels and malls.

Lusail Expressway is an iconic architecture with characteristics inspired by the Qatari marine heritage and forms a combination of Qatar’s past and future, given that it is the main expressway on the sea front that stretches over the northern coast of Doha City. The blue wall panels that decorate the tunnels are inspired by the waves of the fishermen nets under the water, and all other design elements were chosen carefully, such as the lighting poles which will light in blue as well along the road.

The project stretches over 5.5 kilometre from Lusail City in the north to the West Bay area in the south and include 3 multi-level interchanges in addition to two marine bridges near the Pearl and Lusail City.

The main carriageway of Lusail Expressway will consist of 4 lanes in each direction, in addition to a big number of feeder service roads to connect the different destinations with the expressway.

The project also has 6.5 kilometres of separate pedestrian and cycle paths.

The vast excavation and execution works of the multi-level tunnels and bridges in the project, as well as the construction of two marine bridges, was completely executed without interrupting traffic. This is in addition to the excavation works that took place at a depth of 30 metres below ground surface along six kilometres, for integrated infrastructure to allow for electricity and drainage networks, and to allow for maintenance works without the need for more excavations in the future. In addition to building an underground metro tunnel which will cross under the marine bridge.

More than 75 thousand tons of reinforced steel and more than 345 thousand tons of asphalt were used in the project, with the participation of more than 4000 workers.