With a team of engineers and other professionals from 11 countries, the highway is a "truly international project," a Best Projects judge says. That team ran on a fast track, finishing the 38-km road from Morinë to Pristina in 19 months. 

The motorway traverses mountainous terrain and has 11 bridges, four interchanges and 22 overpasses or underpasses. Bechtel-Enka proposed a design with no tunnels. It says the plan saved time and "hundreds of millions of euros" for the government. Moreover, during the June-October 2011 construction peak, the job had more than 4 million worker-hours and no lost-workday incidents.

Location Prizren, Kosovo

Owner Government of Kosovo, Pristina

Lead Design Firms Institut IGH, Zagreb, Croatia; Egis, Guyancourt Cedex, France

General Contractor/CM Bechtel-Enka General Partnership, Pristina

Supervising Engineer Hill International Inc., Athens, Greece