Starting in 2010 KARGO was awarded to the KWS Infra & Mercon combination with Movares providing engineering and architectural expertise. They were tasked with the replacement or refurbishment of 8 historic bridges crossing the Dutch Amsterdam Rijnkanaal, one of the busiest waterways in the world.
The project was specifically conceived with the goal of improving both the amount of traffic and expanding the capacity of the waterway by allowing 4 level container transports to pass under the bridges and connect the port of Amsterdam to the european hinterland.
Another key concern was the minimising of impact of the project on local inhabitants, the hundreds of thousands of commuters using the bridges and the volume of shipping passing underneath every day.
This is why the project had the goal to keep bridge closures to a single weekend, per bridge, by using overnight replacement using innovative heavy-lift subcontractors.