The Burgenland expressway S31 from Eisenstadt to Oberpullendorf is one of the most important driving routes in Burgenland. At the same time, the road has long been known for significant capacity and safety issues. We at Swietelsky are helping to make the route future-proof: with four impressive valley crossings that we are building according to a new, partnership-based procurement model.
About 15,000 drivers are on the Burgenland expressway S31 every day – with corresponding problems regarding capacity and traffic safety on the heavily trafficked route. Therefore, ASFINAG has been intensively pushing the safety expansion since early 2019 over a stretch of about 23 kilometers between Mattersburg and Weppersdorf/St. Martin and has planned to complete it by 2021. Now, the second phase of safety expansion for the S31 to Weppersdorf/St. Martin is on the agenda, which is to be completed by 2026 – along with the new construction of the four large valley crossings at Sieggraben, which has been realized by SWIETELSKY in a working group since March 2023.
A construction project of superlatives, as 34 bridge pillars are continuously rising for the four new bridges. About 11,500 running meters of bored piles will be produced for this, and more than 37,000 cubic meters of concrete will be used. Among the many challenges that we at Swietelsky must master in this project are the high demands from the client ASFINAG for a sustainable, resource-saving construction process in the forest-rich construction area. However, the project is not only pioneering in terms of sustainable construction processes but also in its procurement model. This was designed within the framework of a specially developed and completely new alliance contract: “In this exemplary pilot project,” says SWIETELSKY division manager Arnold Ritter, “both ASFINAG as the client and SWIETELSKY as part of the contractor community operate in a shared risk sphere and pursue the best possible joint completion of the construction project according to the best-for-project principle.”
The crucial difference to previous project procurement models: “The joint project success is the priority, not the individual interests of the alliance partners,” explains Arnold Ritter: “A very contemporary and partnership-cooperative form of collaboration that is based on true equality, transparency, and open communication, aiming to avoid one-sided win-lose scenarios. Instead, risks and responsibilities are shared and managed together among the participants. Likewise, in the case of under- or overshooting the target costs, the contracting parties can either benefit together from a successful and economical project process or also bear financial losses together – however, the actual costs of the contractor are always paid in the interest of fairness.”
Another advantage, as Arnold Ritter explains: “Conventional procurement procedures often result in aggressive price competition. In the case of the S31 Sieggraben construction project, however, a 60:40 weighting of price and quality is at the center, with the topic of quality being subdivided into further subcategories: Seven percent is determined by the quality of opportunity and risk assessment, eleven percent by the preparation and presentation of optimization potential, six percent by the references of key personnel, and sixteen percent by the appearance of the alliance team during the personal hearing.” In addition to the elaborate analyses and preparations for the multi-stage procurement process, Arnold Ritter found the personal hearing appointment to be particularly exciting – and an extraordinary opportunity for the SWIETELSKY team to showcase its strengths under realistic conditions: “During a complete day, we were confronted with concrete situational and problem simulations at this appointment. In addition to the technical knowledge of our alliance team and the understanding of the processing model, our internal and external cooperation and communication skills as well as our conflict resolution competence were also put to the test in a very intensive manner.”
“Such processes in advance of a project procurement are indeed time- and labor-intensive,” summarizes Arnold Ritter, “but I believe that such alliance models belong to the future. Because they not only lead to an even more professional and partnership-oriented collaboration and a more ethically responsible way of working but also to more quality, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency. And those who build more efficiently also build more resource-saving and sustainably.”
