Case Study

Keeping Wrocław moving with BMI Icopal Supermost® surfacing

Harsh Polish winter weather and a tight schedule meant that Wrocław’s busy ringroad network and iconic Rędziński Bridge needed specialist surfacing.

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Keeping Wrocław moving with BMI Icopal Supermost surfacing

Challenge

A surface for all seasons keeps access roads on track

How do you improve a key part of a busy city’s road transport network? The highway ringroad around Wrocław and the access roads to the landmark Rędziński Bridge in Poland is not just any average infrastructure project. Crossing three parts of the River Oder, these access roads support the 4th largest concrete bridge of its type in the world. A project of this scale demanded unique understanding, logistics and resources to efficiently torch a large quantity of high-performance membrane in the middle of the unforgiving Polish winter.

Solution

In 2010, working with architect Jan Biliszczuk and contractors Skanska and Strabag, BMI Group’s civil-engineering experts identified BMI Icopal Supermost® to deliver the hardest-wearing surface for Wrocław’s ringroad motorway and the access roads to the Rędziński bridge. As the work was to be carried out in the winter months, special tents were set up to maintain the concrete substrate at a minimum temperature of 10°C, allowing the bituminous hydroinsulation to be torched in place. With BMI’s own specialist equipment, the work was completed at a rate of 1,000m2 per day in order to hit the tight schedule and keep traffic disruption to a minimum.

Results

The roads reopened on time with their 97,500m2 of the new bitumenised BMI Icopal Supermost® surface all set to take whatever is thrown at it, from its heavy traffic load to the unpredictable Polish weather.

As leaders in the waterproofing sector within civil engineering, we are one of a few companies that could deliver a project of such huge scale in the depths of a harsh winter. We lay in excess of 300,000m2 of bitumen membranes on civil engineering projects in Poland each year.