Leica Geosystems Trustory Building the Longest Road in Greenland

Leica Geosystems TruStory Building the longest road in Greenland

Company Qaqortoq Entreprenørforretning Aps is one of the leading construction con- tractors in southern Greenland. Based in Qaqortoq, this company has been providing needed infrastructure to southern Greenland for over 20 years.

Challenge To upgrade the Leica iCON iXE2 2D to the iCON 3D machine control solution.

Location Qaqortoq, Greenland.

With a population of little more with roads. A new airport can be than 3,000, Qaqortoq is the of major importance for economic city with the most residents growth, provide employment and in southern Greenland. It is encourage tourism, which plays also the fourth largest city on an increasing role in Greenland’s the island. As all populated economy. places in Greenland, Qaqortoq is not connected to other In 2014, Greenland’s Parliament, places by roads. The city is Inatsisartut, granted funding for linked by helicopter to the the construction of a 6.2 km road Narsarsuaq Airport, which is leading to the future airport. located 90 kilometres away. Qaqortoq Entreprenørforening won These helicopters can only the contract and have worked on transport nine people at one the construction of the road for 20 Benefits - Fast and precise excavation. time. The only other way to get months. - Cost and time savings to Qaqortoq is by boat, and this - Robust equipment that works well can only be done as long as it is An adventure in its own right even under extreme conditions. warm. The transportation system in - Higher job satisfaction for machine Greenland is truly an adventure. No operators. Transport to and from Qaqortoq roads, no railways – nature rules. is challenging and expensive. Vast Historically the major means of distances, severe climate and transportation have been by boat in difficult terrain make it actually summer and by dog sled in winter. less expensive to construct a new There are only a total of 150 km of airport than to connect the towns roads in the whole country and only Leica iCON iXE3 on the Hitachi 350 excavator. Building the subgrade layer.

60 km of these are paved. The 6.2 Geosystems have worked faultlessly “If we had known that we would km road in Qaqortoq is the longest even in the harsh climate con- save that much time and cost, we single road that has been built since ditions of the arctic winter with would certainly have bought a 3D the Second World War. temperatures of -25 °C after dark. solution for our driller as well,” says Lars. Constructing a road in southern However, there are certain Greenland is extremely difficult challenges in Greenland as Per Ready for building the airport and expensive. There are no Eriksen from Leica Geosystems Lars explains that Qaqortoq construction materials since the A/S explains: “500 m away from Entreprenørforretning performs subsoil only consists of rocky the centre of Qaqortoq, we lose many sanitation projects, which mountainous terrain, which must the telephone connection. This would benefit from using Leica first be blasted and then crushed makes calibration and service of Geosystems 3D solutions. in order for it to be used as the solutions very difficult. We used foundation for the road. radio repeater stations in order to “We are the best equipped transmit the correction signals from construction company in Greenland, “We have used 35 tonnes of the reference station to the GNSS and if the Greenland parliament explosives to blast 70,000 m3,” antennae on the machines.” decides to build the airport, we are explains Lars Motzfeldt Jensen, definitely ready for the task,” Lars who is one of the two owners of Building a road is now more fun concludes. Qaqortoq Entreprenørforretning. Lars says that the 3D solutions have saved them a lot of time Harsh winter climate and cost. A positive side effect of Qaqortoq Entreprenørforretning using machine control has been the already had a Leica iCON excavate increased job satisfaction for the 2D solution installed on their machine operators. machine but last year, they decided to upgrade to a Leica iCON excavate “It’s so much more fun building a 3D solution and buy a second one road when we use 3D equipment,” for their new Hitachi 350 excavator. says Nikki Davidsen who works as The solutions from Leica machine excavator operator. Nikki Davidsen in the Hitachi 350 excavator.

Leica Geosystems AG www.leica-geosystems.com