The long awaited Lao Cai>>Noi Bai Highway Opens - VietNam's longest

That looks amazing!

Didn't take em long to have what looks like the roads first RTA though!

Oh, I should come back Lao Cai, to visit Sapa someday... I went to Lao Cai some years ago, it took about 8 hours (9pm-5am) by train.

eodmatt wrote:

Didn't take em long to have what looks like the roads first RTA though!

Construction crew putting final touches on the roads.

With what looks like an ambulance in attendance? The pic is not so clear on my phone.

No, Matt, I think it's a man with red T-shirt. I saw his head .

ngattt wrote:

No, Matt, I think it's a man with red T-shirt. I saw his head .

Ngattt, yep I stand corrected. I opened the pic on my pc and can see that it is a bloke with a red t shirt.

Apart from that, it is a nice looking bit of road.

ngattt wrote:

No, Matt, I think it's a man with red T-shirt. I saw his head .

This guy?

http://www.thanhniennews.com/society/vi … 31613.html

Vietnam's billion-dollar highway cracks after opening

A long crack has appeared on a brand new expressway connecting Hanoi to the rural northwest just a few days after it was opened to traffic; investors blamed the soft ground it was built upon.
The crack was discovered in a section between Yen Bai to Phu Tho province on the 245-km (152-mile) Noi Bai – Lao Cai Expressway, which drew a US$1.5-billion investment from the Vietnam Expressway Corporation (VEC).
The Ministry of Transport has instructed VEC to fix the crack and issue warnings those traveling on that portion of the highway.
According to VEC, the crack spans over ten meters and emerged in a section built over a rice paddy.
The company has announced that it is monitoring possible sinkage on the road.
An 'unexpected fault'
VEC said the damaged road was designed and built by the Keangnam Construction Company, which followed the proper protocols for surveying and treating the loose foundation.
According to Le Kim Thanh, deputy general director of VEC, the builder drilled 24 survey points along that stretch of road.
He said the crack was an “unexpected fault because it appeared in the middle of the street and not near a survey points.”
“It was affected by two strong typhoons and heavy rain. Flooded land in the surrounding area has accelerated the sinking," he added.
Thanh said it normally takes between several months and two years to monitor and repair those sections.
“The results of our survey will determine whether the sinkage is the result of natural causes or poor construction,” he said.
Cut corners and incompetence
The stretch of road being surveyed for sinkage (known as package A4) was completed in August following several delays and media reports of incompetence, shortcuts in equipment, money and personnel and shoddy subcontractor work.
By June, Keangnam had only completed a little over 70 percent of the package and the transport ministry had to mobilize other contractors to finish the job.
Nguyen Quang Toan, an associate professor of Hanoi Transport University, said a loose foundation can lead to sinkage while cracks can be caused by other reasons.
“The actual reason could be mistakes in surveying and design or poor-quality construction.”
“The builder must be held responsible for the damaged sections and the investor must also be held accountable also because it collects a toll,” he said.
The average car using the expressway pays around VND300,000 for a four seater. Traveling the full length of the highway costs VND1 million per vehicle.

Quote:  "According to VEC, the crack spans over ten meters and emerged in a section built over a rice paddy." EndQuote

In other words the engineers were incompetent and failed to either do a proper soil analysis, or verify the results and check on the contractor's . It's not that Vietnam couldn't find such engineers. When the Korean high speed rail was built, A Vietnamese Swiss citizen named Bao, himself a graduate of France's Ecole National des Ponts et Chaussees, was hired by the investors to do the checking and keep the contractors honest.

Oh, right, it wasn't at one of the designated checkpoints, and there had been a typhoon.

lirelou wrote:

Quote:  "According to VEC, the crack spans over ten meters and emerged in a section built over a rice paddy." EndQuote

In other words the engineers were incompetent and failed to either do a proper soil analysis, or verify the results and check on the contractor's . It's not that Vietnam couldn't find such engineers. When the Korean high speed rail was built, A Vietnamese Swiss citizen named Bao, himself a graduate of France's Ecole National des Ponts et Chaussees, was hired by the investors to do the checking and keep the contractors honest.

Oh, right, it wasn't at one of the designated checkpoints, and there had been a typhoon.

Despite the typhoon and the fact that the fault occurred at a place that wasn't a check point this is almost certainly either a design fault or a failure of QM. And of course for certain endeavours in Vietnam, external QC is not allowed (so as not to cause trouble), in the hopes that "it'll be a;right" and to prevent "loss of face".

The Ministry of Public Security have arrested five people for allowing overloaded trucks onto a completed section of the Noi Bai – Lao Cai expressway which remains under construction.
The arrestees include Nguyen Hoang Thang and Nguyen Tuan Hoang of the Vietnam Expressway Corporation; Ha Nghia Hanh and Dao Huu Quan of Bridges and Road Construction Group No. 18.6.

Full story at: Money gets access.

Northern road construction companies are notorious for bribes. Even landed a deputy minister in jail.

EODMatt, in reference to your:  "almost certainly either a design fault or a failure of QM".

Yes, that is always possible. I'm not an engineer, but was was involved in several engineering projects in Latin America. Two of those were to repair projects previously constructed by US Army Reserve engineers, which in some ways may echo projects in Vietnam. One was to repair in road in Honduras. The unit that constructed the road did not pay attention to drainage patterns and evidence, putting a few culverts where more massive drainage capabilities were required. The next rainy season punched holes through the earth under the road, which the locals kept trying to use until the road collapsed collapsed into the wash. The second was a bridge over the Rio Indio in Panama that washed away in the first rainy season. A National Guard officer who was a civil engineer in civilian life spent a few days studying the collapse site and came back to tell me: 'The idiots didn't do any soil analyses.' He's found a better site with bedrock a few hundred meters upriver, identified where the road could be extended to meet it, and put in a bailey bridge that was still standing twelve years later.

Topical soil characteristics do differ from zone to zone. We built a road and bridge in the Ecuadorian Amazon, which was the first time since the Burma Road that Army engineers had worked in an area where the soil never completely dries. While Both Burma and Northern Vietnam are within the tropic of cancer, I don't believe anywhere in the "Tonkinese Alps" mirrors those conditions, though the U Minh forest might. But it is always possible that a local micro-climate does, particularly in areas where human habitation or forest clearing have severely impacted soil drainage patterns.

My apologies if I've dragged the point out.

lirelou wrote:

He's found a better site with bedrock a few hundred meters upriver, identified where the road could be extended to meet it, and put in a bailey bridge that was still standing twelve years later.

Talking about Bailey Bridges, many of the bridges in the rural areas of VN are US Army bridges that have survived over 40 years of no maintenance and abuse.

VN road construction seems to be a little different to methods I've seen elsewhere in the world. They lay down a bed of granite 'stones' of about 2" size and continue this until the road bed is level. Then they run vibrating rollers up and down for a few weeks. During this time period it will usually have rained.

Then a more finely chipped granite is applied - about 0.5 inch size - and allowed to get rained on and vibrated again.

Finally two layers of pre-tarred paving is applied. In the UK they used to have 'tar trucks' that would squirt molten tar on to stone.

Many 'road raising' projects are always in process in TP HCM, to 'reduce' water levels (which usually end up flooding adjacent ground floors). These are not small projects - I mean they raise road levels occasionally by over 1 metre in height.

And they hope to install subways?

lirelou wrote:

EODMatt, in reference to your:  "almost certainly either a design fault or a failure of QM".

Yes, that is always possible. I'm not an engineer, but was was involved in several engineering projects in Latin America. Two of those were to repair projects previously constructed by US Army Reserve engineers, which in some ways may echo projects in Vietnam. One was to repair in road in Honduras. The unit that constructed the road did not pay attention to drainage patterns and evidence, putting a few culverts where more massive drainage capabilities were required. The next rainy season punched holes through the earth under the road, which the locals kept trying to use until the road collapsed collapsed into the wash. The second was a bridge over the Rio Indio in Panama that washed away in the first rainy season. A National Guard officer who was a civil engineer in civilian life spent a few days studying the collapse site and came back to tell me: 'The idiots didn't do any soil analyses.' He's found a better site with bedrock a few hundred meters upriver, identified where the road could be extended to meet it, and put in a bailey bridge that was still standing twelve years later.

Topical soil characteristics do differ from zone to zone. We built a road and bridge in the Ecuadorian Amazon, which was the first time since the Burma Road that Army engineers had worked in an area where the soil never completely dries. While Both Burma and Northern Vietnam are within the tropic of cancer, I don't believe anywhere in the "Tonkinese Alps" mirrors those conditions, though the U Minh forest might. But it is always possible that a local micro-climate does, particularly in areas where human habitation or forest clearing have severely impacted soil drainage patterns.

My apologies if I've dragged the point out.

You are quite right. It may indeed have been due to some "localised circumstances", however, localised circumstances are something which any decent civil engineer will take into account when designing a road - or any other structure.