The consortium PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mott MacDonald, White & Case and SIEBERT + TALAŠ will be transaction advisor for the Mohelnice-Opatovec section of the D35 motorway project.
Another D35 award was recently handed to the consortium of Eurovia CZ, TuCon, and Eurovia SK for construction the 550m-long twin tube Homole Tunnel that will be part of the Ostrov-Vysoké Mýto section. The cost will be around €74.23 million.
Meanwhile, the 16.6km Staré Mesto-Opatovec and the 18.2km Mohelnice-Staré Mesto sections of the motorway are to be built under a public-private partnership at a cost of more than €1.27 billion.
Once all 260km of the D35 motorway - formerly Expressway R35 – are completed it will be the second longest highway in the Czech Republic, running from Úlibice to the D1 at the town of Lipník nad Bečvou. It is designed to be an alternative route to the D1 motorway between the capital city Prague and Olomouc and Ostrava.
Mott MacDonald also recently developed a standardised economic appraisal methodology for road investment in the Czech Republic based on HDM-4, the World Bank's Highway Development and Management software system for investigating choices in road transport infrastructure investment. The work was a component of Mott MacDonald's Technical Assistance to Programmes of Highway Construction and Reconstruction that is co-financed by the European Bank and the Czech government.
The principal elements of the system – developed in association with the UK's University of Birmingham – are the HDM-4 model and a software interface between the model and the established Road Data Bank of the Czech Republic. This interface – called ADAPTOR – enables the user to easily create HDM-4 input files.
Mott MacDonald conducted a major calibration exercise to adapt the HDM-4 model parameters to Czech conditions which involved research into traffic, road user effects, road deterioration and climate data.
A standardised appraisal system was built around a set of default parameter files for the vehicle fleet, maintenance and improvement standards, speed flow curves, traffic flow patterns and climate zones. A standard methodology was also developed for appraising different types of projects.
A system manual was then developed, comprising an appraisal guide, software users' guide and calibration guide. Users were trained at the University of Birmingham and in the Czech Republic.
