The Dutch Department of Public Works and the province of Overijssel have announced that they intend to award the contract for the IJsseldelta polder to Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V.
The project is part of the national Room for the River program, which consists of more than 30 measures aimed at providing better flood protection for areas close to the country’s rivers. The project will involve lowering the summer bed of the Lower IJssel river along a length of 7.5 kilometers near the town of Kampen and creating a bypass to the south of Kampen.
The work will be executed in conjunction with Van Hattum and Blankevoort in the Isala Delta construction consortium. Initial preparations will take place in the fall of 2014 with the project scheduled for completion by the end of 2019. The contract represents a value of around EUR 127 million of which Boskalis’ share is 50%.
Room for the River
In addition to this new contract Boskalis is already involved in several other major hydraulic engineering projects in the context of the government’s Room for the River program. These include the Veessen-Wapenveld high-water channel, the Lower Rhine project, the Deventer project, where a total of six secondary channels of the IJssel river are being dug, and the Noordwaard project near the town of Gorinchem.
Boskalis’ strategy is aimed at benefitting from key macro-economic factors which drive worldwide demand in the markets: expansion of the global economy, increase in energy consumption, global population growth and the challenges that go hand in hand with climate change. This project is largely driven by climate change.
[mappress]
Press Release, July 22, 2014