High-Speed Link Testing Dutch Skills With Tough Going In Low Country
Along an arc roughly south from Amsterdam to Belgium, six teams are now forming the base for a 300-km-per-hour train service, due to start operations in 2006. Their tools include a tunnel boring machine with the worlds biggest cutting head, at 14.87 meters in diameter. On the sidelines, another construction team is preparing to install track and equipment to complete well over $3 billion of project infrastructure.
Managing the interface between these two tasks has been "the biggest challenge," says David Gedney, chief exec-utive officer of track and equipment contractor Infraspeed B.V, Zoetermeer. Disparate civil contractors with their own headaches must pull out before Gedneys workers can gain control of the route to complete the system by 2007.