CEEQUAL score of Excellent for new road from Oslo to Bergen in Norway

E16 Bagn–Bjørgo is an 11.1 km stretch of the main road between Norway’s capitol Oslo and the second largest city, Bergen. The goal of the project was to significantly improve the safety of travellers compared to driving conditions on the old road.

The main sustainability challenges for the project were:

• Dust, noise and vibrations
• Emissions to the water environment
• Invasive and protected species
• Energy consumption during construction
• Materials and waste

These issues were handled through planning, measurements, corrective actions if necessary and follow-up. During the duration of the projects several corrective actions were made. For example, related to dust from site traffic and emissions to the water environment. At the end of the project, there had only been minor incidents, with no lasting negative impacts to neighbours or the environment.

The following examples highlight the projects best practice and innovation:

• The alternative suggestion for construction method which reduced the construction period by 10 months and reduced the diesel consumption by 72,000 litres
• Creating value for the local community by using 190,000 m3 of excavated rock to build a local road and elevating the local soccer pitch to avoid damage from flooding
• Reducing waste and creating value for the local community by reusing formworks as bridges in the local cross-country trails

Use and management of physical resources
During the construction phase the planned 250 W NAH lighting in the tunnel was replaced with 129 W LED which resulted in a reduced annual energy consumption of more than 100,000 kWh. Furthermore, 190,000 m3 of excavated rock was used locally to construct a road and elevate a sporting field to avoid flooding.

Used formworks were given to a local cross-country skiing organisation to use as creek-crossings, both reducing waste and creating value for the local community.

The construction period was reduced by 10 months compared to what was originally planned. The alternative construction method resulted in amongst other things a reduction of 72,000 litres of diesel for movement of blasted rock by trucks.

Project management
As a result of the choice of going for a CEEQUAL certification of the project, the project team was made more aware of the environmental issues. This had a positive effect as the importance of environmental issues were made clear to everyone through the embodiment in CEEQUAL.

Land use and landscape
In the planning of the project it was decided that the dimensioning criteria for flooding should be a downpour scenario occurring every 200-years. This is stricter than the baseline criteria and resulted in the following enhancements:

Due to the collaboration between the client, Statens Vegvesen, and the contractor Skanska, the project was finished 10 months before originally planned. The contract value was 73.5 M EUR.

For the project in isolation and the industry as a whole, E16 Bagn-Bjørgo is important as it is the first road-project with a CEEQUAL certification. It is also the first project with a CEEQUAL certification for one of the major clients in the civil industry in Norway. This signals an important shift and an opportunity for using CEEQUAL as a common platform for improving sustainability in a more effective way on an industry level.

The use of CEEQUAL influenced the project mainly through creating awareness of sustainability and actively identifying possibilities for improvement with sustainability performance in mind. For example considering alternative construction methods and creating additional value for the local community.