Bouygues wins Hong Kong undersea road tunnel contract

Mammoth project to be completed by end-2018.

French construction major Bouygues Construction has won the US$1.54 billion (€1.15 billion) contract for the construction of a 4.2 kilometer undersea road tunnel in Hong Kong. It the largest design-build contract ever awarded by Hong Kong.

The project will see the construction of a twin-tube tunnel, each tube measuring 14 meters in diameter with two traffic lanes. The tunnel will link the New Territories region north of Hong Kong to Lantau Island, the location of Hong Kong International Airport.

It will be bored 50 meters below sea level, which constitutes a record depth for Bouygues Construction. Two tunnel boring machines (TBMs) will be used for this purpose. TBMs are rotary drilling machines for excavating and building tunnel structures.

The two tunnel tubes will be connected every 100 meters by 42 cross-passages. Ground-freezing technology will be used to provide a watertight environment to enable these passages to be bored.

Philippe Bonnave, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Bouygues Construction, said this contract is a major event for Bouygues Construction, which in the space of a year has won the two largest construction contracts ever awarded in Hong Kong: this one, and the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao bridge.

The works are scheduled to take more than five years. Handover is scheduled for the end of 2018. More than 1,000 employees will be working on the project at peak periods.