The Chinese need to have Pelješac bridge completed in just over thirty months time (by July 2021), but what of the actual access roads leading to it? That appears to be quite another story, and rather unsurprisingly - a long and potentially complicated one.
As Josip Bohutinski/VL/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 9th of January, 2019, the first signs of life of the construction of Pelješac bridge site began today.
The Chinese consortium led by the China Road and Bridge Corporation signed up for this demanding job more than five months ago, and according to the contract, Pelješac bridge has to be built within 36 months, meaning that this strategic Croatian project should theoretically be completed in the summer of 2021. While works on Pelješac bridge itself have finally begun, albeit slowly, the works on the bridge's obviously required access roads are not even close to their beginning. So far, no contractor has even been chosen to build these roads, and Croatian roads (Hrvatske ceste) has now launched two tenders for the eventual construction of the bridge's access roads.
In regard to the first part, more specifically the Duboka-Sparagovići section of the road, offers will begin being taken in the middle of June, but the decision on the contractor has not yet been made, although it has been stated in the related documentation that this decision will be made within 120 days from the day of the opening of the actual bid. It has also been stated that the chosen contractor will be required to build their section of the road within 33 months following their initial introduction to the job. Whether or not Pelješac bridge and its access roads will be completed at the same time is already questionable.
Problems can be foreseen, or better to say predicted for argument's sake, that if one takes into account the simple fact that once the contractor is finally selected, other bidders have the right to appeal, and the resolution of these procedures in such bids typically last anywhere up to three months. If Croatian roads decided on the contractor soon, that contractor would still not actually have anything to do with getting any of their work done until the middle of the year. Seven offers have come in so far, the lowest of which was sent by Integral engineering from neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, ironically a country which has shown the least support for the construction of Pelješac bridge.
Back at the beginning of December 2018, a public tender for the construction of the second part of Pelješac bridge's access roads was published, and the currently estimated value of these works stands at a massive 449.1 million kuna. The deadline for bids for the second part of the road is January the 21st, 2019. The selected contractor will have a 30-month deadline for the construction of the 18 kilometre road to be put into operation, but once again, appeals are expected to follow any final decision, which translates to more waiting around, and more wasted time.
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Click here for the original article by Josip Bohutinski/VL on Poslovni Dnevnik
