Kuwait to get world's longest bridge Sheikh Jaber Causeway, to reduce travel time between Kuwait City and Subiya by 50 minutes

Kuwait is all set to be the home of the world's longest bridge - the Sheikh Jaber Causeway which will be linking Kuwait City to Subiyah New Town across the Kuwait Bay. The total length of the bridge will be around 48.53 km, about 7 km longer than China's Haiwan Bridge which is in Qingdao of Shandong Province.

It is reported that the construction work for the project is in its final stage and the Hyundai Engineering & Construction (Hyundai E&C) will complete the project this year. Hyundai E&C has won the $2.7 billion project in 2013. The Hyundai E&C had won the project along with a local company Combined Group. Hyundai E&C share in the project is 78 percent while Combined Group bears the rest 22 percent of the total construction cost.

"Hyundai E&C is constructing the Jaber Causeway Bridge in Kuwait where the temperature exceeds 50 degrees Celsius during the summer season and massive sandstorms hit in spring and autumn. The 2.7-trillion-won ($2.6 billion) mega project designed to build the 36.1-kilometer bridge (main part) is well underway with 92 percent being completed," Hyundai had said in mid-2018. The project is expected to get completed in April this year.

Explaining the difficulties it faced during the construction, Hyundai E&C had said, "The key of the Kuwait Sheikh Jaber Causeway project is to build the main bridge. The 340-meter main bridge in the center of the offshore bridge is built as an asymmetric cable-stayed bridge. Although the cable-stayed construction is often applied for long-span bridges, the construction of asymmetric cable-stayed bridges is not common. The structure of pylons is so complicated that the construction site used the cutting-edge BIM (Building Information Modeling) technology to minimize errors in designing and construction."

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It said that Hyundai E&C also conducted a wide range of safety-related tests to ensure that the main bridge can withstand high temperature, seawater and strong wind.  Moreover, the FSLM (Full Span Launching Method) was used to build the superstructure of the bridge. To erect 1,800-ton PC box girders, Hyundai E&C produced a variety of heavy equipment including a floating crane and a launching gantry.

The bridge is expected to cut down the travel time between downtown of Kuwait City and Subiya to 20 minutes from over 70 minutes at present.