A9 BaHo: 1.7 million cubic meters of soil of which 80 percent is circular

The widening of the A9 Badhoevedorp-Holendrecht motorway requires a lot of sand. To be precise, 1.7 million cubic meters. JdB Group supplied this sand, 80 percent of which was secondary. This is a major logistical challenge, because how do you ensure that very large volumes of the right type of sand are delivered and applied to the right place in a short period of time?

The widening and deepening of the A9 is one of the larger projects JdB is involved in. This Hoofddorp-based family business is a medium-sized contractor employing 160 people across three locations. They do everything with sand, from soil and sand remediation, preparing residential areas for construction, landscaping around distribution centers to reinforcing dikes. Example projects include the preparation for construction of the Kreekrijk housing project in Assendelft and the Smart Mobility hub in Amsterdam. "What we are good at are circular or secondary sand streams," says Jan Grisnich, business manager realization JdB. "Sand that we dispose of somewhere, we can reapply elsewhere. The sand we processed on the A9 consists of 300 different batches that we applied in accordance with the applicable quality and environmental standards."

Right sand in the right place

On behalf of Rijkswaterstaat, VeenIX is widening and deepening the A9 between Badhoevedorp and Holendrecht. For the widening of the A9, JdB Group delivered a total of 1.7 million cubic meters of sand on behalf of VeenIX. Of this, 80 percent was secondary, a "small" 1.4 million cubic meters. Moreover, JdB extracted this secondary sand within an average radius of 35 kilometers from the A9 because of the MKI score to be achieved that had been promised to the Department of Public Works. In short, quite a task. "Besides finding the required amount of sand, we also looked specifically for different qualities of the secondary soil streams. This difference can be environmental, i.e. how clean is the sand, but also civil engineering where grain distribution and composition are important. For the temporary bypass near Amstelveen, for example, we applied a higher quality of sand because this sand will be released later and must be easy to apply elsewhere. So for us it is important to know what the quality requirements of a specific location are, so we can look for the right material to match."

Challenge

Another task was scheduling. Grisnich: "You conform to a fairly tight schedule where sand had to be delivered regularly at nights or on weekends. Then we have to make sure that we have that volume available at that time. Not all locations allow overnight loading, for example. That's why we built several depots especially on the job site. We ourselves as JdB also have several depots where we temporarily store the sand." 

Volumes

Grisnich is proud that JdB was able to collaborate on the A9. "We ourselves are based in Hoofddorp and drive over the A9 on a daily basis. It is therefore great that as a medium-sized contractor we were given the opportunity to contribute to such a large project. We showed our strength that we were able to deliver such volumes within the set schedule."