OREANDA-NEWS. After a competitive tendering process, Transstroymekhanisatsiya, a Mostotrest subsidiary, has been selected by state company Avtodor as its preferred bidder for the construction, maintenance, repair, and overhaul of the 517km- 544km section of the M-4 Don Highway which runs from Moscow via Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, and Krasnodar to Novorossiysk in the Voronezh region.

The project will be implemented within the framework of a long-term investment agreement, which will run for 23 years. The total construction cost is RUB 17.3 billion (including VAT). The project envisions a RUB 1.9 billion (including VAT) investment from the contractor, which will be repaid during the operations phase in accordance with the approved schedule. The construction period under the agreement is between 2014 and 2016. After the construction work is completed, TSM will be responsible for the maintenance, repair and overhaul of the M-4 Don road section between 517 km -544 km while the agreement is in force.

During the first part of the contract, TSM specialists will construct a 29 kilometre stretch of the new category IA four-lane highway with a 6m wide median strip. Included in the construction are two multilevel interchanges, five underpasses and nine flyovers (462m and 697m in length, respectively), and two pedestrian crossings (163m in length). TSM will also install 21 culverts totalling 946m in length to handle surface drainage of the road. The designated speed of traffic is up to 150 km/h.

To reduce the potential environmental impact, the project envisages noise barriers at locations of high acoustic load, forest belts bordering the entire length of the projected road area, as well as artificial structures designed to assist animal migration routes.

Commenting, OJSC Mostotrest General Director, Vladimir Vlasov said: “We are extremely pleased to end 2013 as the winners of two major tenders: the construction of the 209 kilometre segment of the new Moscow-St Petersburg high-speed motorway worth 144.6 billion roubles, and this project. Together these two contracts make up more than 50% of the Group’s consolidated backlog as from the end of the first half of the year. This workload will allow us to systematically increase our construction volumes over the next few years and also means we can adopt a selective approach to participation in new projects, avoiding contracts with risky economics. It is also worth noting that the new project is consistent with our strategy of participating in projects that are primarily located close to existing construction projects, which helps to keep down redeployment costs and maximise the speed with which we can turn around our production capacity. Currently, the company already has large-scale production capacity deployed close to the site of the future construction project; in November, experts from TSM and Mostotrest’s Voronezh based brunch Mostootryad-81 completed a series of works on the M4 Don federal highway bypass around Voronezh (at kilometres 492 to 517).”

The M-4 Don federal highway which is over 1500km long (Moscow-Voronezh-Rostov-on-Don-Krasnodar-Novorossiysk) connects the central and northern regions of the European part of the country with the North Caucasus, the Black Sea coast, and the port of Novorossiysk. In May 2010 the M-4 “Don” road was transferred to the trust management of Avtodor. Large-scale reconstruction work is currently underway on this road, as a result of which the whole M-4 “Don” highway will be of category 1 standard by 2019. Following the opening of new high-speed segments bypassing residential areas in Tula, Voronezh and Lipetsk regions, 918,172 km of the M-4 “Don” highway were classified as category 1B, 101,135 km as category 1A and 100,629 km as category 1C.