Features

Last year's flooding in the Australian state of New South Wales left the roads in the Richmond Valley in a poor state with 400km in need of urgent repair. To quickly meet the aggregate demand for the work, Richmond Valley Council called on contract crushing specialist M&M Crushing to produce 100,000tonnes of 20mm road base and 7mm, 10mm and 14mm graded aggregates from Peterson's Quarry.

Egis has an innovative approach to addressing construction defects - *Martin O’Flaherty, Jean Pohu. Defects often become apparent after construction projects are handed over to the client and this is a common problem across most highway projects. The problem is shared by highway operators who have assumed the responsibility of managing such projects.

Improving aggregate production and quality levels is not just about investing in the latest equipment but making sure existing machines are optimised - Claire Symes reports. Although the cost of fuel has dropped since last summer's high, reducing the cost/tonne of production is still high on the agenda for most quarry operators, along with improving quality.

In determining the mechanical strength of cement, the European Standard EN 196 prescribes both compressive and flexural tests, so when Italian company Tecnotest designed its current generation of cement testing machines, the aim was to obtain highly accurate results over the full scale despite the wide range involved by implementing a dual scale in a single test bay, using load cells as dynamometers.

MB S.p.A. of Italy has launched the first of a new generation in its bucket crusher range following the successful launch of the units in 2007. According to the company, which currently exports to more than 100 countries, applications for MB bucket crushers, which fit a variety of excavator sizes (and which also include an iron separator) are many.

SACYR Chile is constructing a bridge on the new Northeast Access Highway in the capital Santiago, and when complete the 22.5km route will link the suburbs of Vitacura and Colina to the city. Acceso Nororiente, opening this year, is the fifth urban freeway in Santiago and stands out because of the challenges in the construction of its bridges ands tunnels.

Well known in the compaction field, BOMAG continues to raise its profile in the paving sector with the launch of another new machine, the BF300 paver. This model replaces the earlier Marini-developed BF331 and is said to be a combination of the best German and Italian engineering as well as sharing some features with the BF600 series launched by BOMAG during last year. Developed for the 7-8tonne class the BF300 is versatile and manoeuvrable and has a transport width of just 2.5m, even including its mounted

One of the world's longest bridges is being built in Norway – for traffic volumes of just 2,000 cars/day reports Adrian Greeman. The stunning landscape of the long sea fjords in Norway is one of its glories, attracting thousands of tourists every summer. But the high mountains and deep sea inlets are also one of the great obstacles to transport and development.

An in-depth congress is being held in conjunction with the Intermat exhibition. Visitors to the show will be able to find out about the latest developments in sustainable road construction by attending this congress, which is being organised by the Committee for European Construction Equipment (CECE).