The winners of the Joint Construction Project of the Year 2019 competition were selected on Tuesday 29 October in Helsinki. The winner of the municipal series was a project implemented by MPY Palvelut for the City of Mikkeli, where old municipal centres were connected to fibre optic broadband. The best project in the business category was Netplaza’s fibre optic project at Reisjärvi, aimed at looking for new operating methods that could facilitate the coordination of infrastructure construction requiring excavation work between different actors and make this practice more common.
“We received 21 great project entries for the joint construction competition involving dozens of operators from all over Finland. In terms of scale, Finland is a big country, and the benefits of joint construction are obvious here. Finland is leading the way in Europe in the field of joint construction”, rejoices Päivi Peltola-Ojala, Chief Specialist at the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom.
The competition for Joint Construction Project of the Year, organised by the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom and other operators in the field, searches for new methods to facilitate joint construction of infrastructure, reduce construction costs and facilitate cooperation between different infrastructure operators.
Netplaza’s project created new methods to facilitate joint construction of infrastructure requiring excavation work
The best project in the business category was Netplaza’s fibre optic project at Reisjärvi, aimed at looking for new operating methods that could facilitate the coordination of infrastructure construction requiring excavation work between different actors and make this practice more common. The Reisjärvi fibre optic project participated in the competition as a joint project carried out by R-Net, Netplaza and Elenia.
“It feels great to win, because the laying of each metre of optical fibre and electricity cables in this project has been coordinated as far as technically possible. In Reisjärvi, we have built 190 kilometres of optical fibre network. Of this length, 154 kilometres were laid in a trench shared with the electricity network, with a joint construction rate of 82 per cent. Such high co-location rates can only be achieved when the plans are coordinated on time”, says Hanne Nivala, Business Development Manager at Netplaza.
“Additional benefits achieved include a customer-centric approach, as all infrastructure work on the site is carried out once and for all, rather than digging up the yard several years in a row”, sums up Matti Kangas, representative of RNet.
Old municipal centres connected to fibre optic broadband through collaboration in the Mikkeli project
The winner of the municipal category was a project put out to tender by the City of Mikkeli and implemented by MPY Palvelut Oyj, in which the areas of Anttola, Haukivuori, Ristiina and Suomenniemi, as well as the district of Otava in Mikkeli, were connected to fibre optic broadband through joint efforts.
“It is great to receive recognition for a job well done! In joint construction projects of this type, the residents only have to bear with the inconvenience of excavations once, and they get both a reliable electricity network and fast data connections. This obviously is an advantage for the city, too, and minimising the nuisance caused to the residents is definitely the greatest benefit of joint construction”, says Project Manager Timo Rissanen from the City of Mikkeli.
"Right from the start, we kept a close eye on construction work related to Järvi-Suomen Energia’s plans to build a weatherproof electricity network", Juha Putkonen, Sales Manager at MPY, describes the early stages of the work. "We piggybacked on these projects whenever the schedules and work stages allowed it. This way, the environmental damage of digging the trenches for both the power lines and the fibre optic cable could be minimised.”
“The power grids of the future require a telecommunications link, so this was a natural way to start joint construction work. Our joint efforts served the best interest of the entire region”, explains Arto Pajunen, CEO of Järvi-Suomen Energia.
See also: