Warbud News

The VINCI Group has been organising the VINCI Innovation competition once in every two years since 2001. The purpose of the competition is to find and award innovative solutions which are helpful and supportive in daily work on constructions sites and offices. The competition promotes solutions which protect the environment, make work easier, shorten construction time or bring savings.

In this year in Region Europe the winning project was proposed by Warbud under the name "Reduction of the earth pressure on the retaining wall by blocks of EPS" in the category Equipment and Tools.

Warbud has proposed a number of innovative ideas and solutions which were awarded in the competition but it is the first time our company has won the main award.

The awards gala took place on 8 September 2017 at Hilton Hotel in Frankfurt. The European companies owned by VINCI sent 196 applications to the competition out of which 12 solutions were awarded in the following categories: Dissemination, Health and Safety, Sustainable Development, Partners, Digital Transformation, Processes and Techniques, Marketing, Equipment and Tools, Management.

The Jury emphasized in the substantiation of their verdict that the project was the first use of Styrofoam blocks in Poland to stabilise a tunnel wall. In addition to that the technology connecting light Styrofoam embankment with the reinforced earth is less time-consuming than traditional backfilling methods. The innovation may be adopted and used in any project in a situation when it is necessary to quickly and significantly reduce earth pressure of a traditionally built embankment on retaining structures.

Description of the winning project

As a result of carrying out expansion of the railway station in Gdansk Warbud we encountered the problem of continuity of construction due to the lack of backfill soil of one of the retaining walls of the tunnel located along the bottom edge of the existing slope. To solve the problem was to design a retaining wall, which ultimately would be the far wall of a railway tunnel on the active main railway line. To meet all the aforementioned requirements and be able to continue to work according to the schedule, the use of lightweight fill with blocks of EPS polystyrene was proposed to reduce the pressure on the wall of reinforced concrete. To relieve the wall we used EPS blocks at the bottom and reinforced soil at the top of the structure. On the basis of an executive project we built in over 6000 m³ of EPS blocks. Without relieving the retaining wall using EPS blocks would not be possible to maintain the time limits provided for in the construction schedule. It would be also impossible to continue working on the implementation of the railway tunnel due to lack of stability of the structure.