SPRINT Highway
Connecting the Kerinchi Link, Damansara Link and Penchala Link wasn’t an easy task, but the SPRINT Highway did just that. The 26km highway features 700m of twin-bore tunnels, 16 bridges, 13 interchanges and 10 pedestrian bridges.
Our scope of work included design, construction, testing and commissioning for the entire length of the highway.
Connecting the Kerinchi Link, Damansara Link and Penchala Link wasn’t an easy feat, but the SPRINT Highway did just that. The SPRINT Highway is a 26.5km dual three-lane road with 13 interchanges, 10 pedestrian bridges, three toll plazas and a 700 metre twin-bore tunnels.
Completed in 2004, the construction of the Penchala tunnels using the drill-and-blast method was the major technical challenge of this project.
At their deepest, the tunnels lie under 115m of overburden, though it was by and large good quality granite that allowed an advance rate of 4m with each blast. To increase the safety and workability factor, delay blasting was used.
The recovered granite was crushed into single-sized aggregates to be reused for construction as much as possible, with not much of material wasted.
Among the safety features in the tunnel which quite ahead of their time were linear heat detector, gas detectors, adaptive
lighting and ventilation fans. In the event of any emergencies, people can still escape via three cross-passages that link the two Penchala tunnels.
