Halcrow has been working in Argentina since the 1950s and has provided expertise for many projects in the water management sector.
Our latest project is a water treatment plant exploiting the vast resources of the Paraná de las Palmas and Luján Rivers and will supply some 2.5 million people in northern Buenos Aires with water. It is a key part of Argentina’s water and sanitation master plan to supply water treatment services for 11,000,000 people by 2011.
Comprising a river intake and infrastructure to convey, treat and distribute potable water, the Tigre project is the largest to be constructed in Argentina for half a century.
Led by Rodolfo Aradas, the Buenos Aires-based team has been providing design services to Brazilian giant Odebrecht since February 2009. As construction activity intensifies in 2011, Halcrow will provide Odebrecht with technical guidance and support as the contractor navigates through the project’s estimated 6,000 deliverables.
Projects of this scale invariably pose technical hurdles for design teams, and the Tigre scheme is no exception. Eroded by successive floods the site’s poor quality soil forced the team to rethink their design approach for the tunnel and ancillary works, as well as the foundations for water tanks and other structures. Given the sheer size of the pumping stations, Halcrow produced theoretical designs which were then tested and optimised using scaled physical models.
Rodolfo explained that, besides the project’s mammoth proportions, the greatest single challenge lies in the level of co-ordinated timing required for ‘fast track’ design and build projects. “This means the design is carried out at almost the same time as construction demands it,” he said, “which requires a high degree of communication capacity and quick response by the design team.”
Fulfilling this need for close contact, a Halcrow team of six on-site engineers provides a constant link between the contractor and the main design team, and a permanent source of technical support.
The project scope includes:
- intake work on Lujan River for 75,000m3/day for the first production stage
- intake work on Paraná de las Palmas River for 1,500,000m3/day for the final production stage
- 14km of 3.6m-diameter tunnel and ancillary works
- treatment works capable of processing 900,000m3/day, including sludge treatment – the first of this size in the country
- raw water pumping station at the inlet to the works
- treated water pumping station at the outlet of the works
- three aqueducts with a total length of 45km, including rail, road and river crossings