Innovative techniques, 100% Moroccan skills, ingenious phasing… The Moroccan National Highways Company (ADM) revealed, this Thursday, December 22, the strong cards of its strategy allowing the progress of the last two batches of the tripling of the Casablanca-Berrechid highway and the Casablanca bypass highway carried out on the busiest sections of the Kingdom.
The workshop organized today by ADM was an opportunity for those in charge of the project to bring to the public the details of the work carried out and to unveil the different phases of a structuring project which aims to make traffic flowing through the metropolis more fluid, especially following its densification in recent years. Being carried out by 100% Moroccan skills, the project has an overall budget of more than two billion dirhams, an increased budget compared to the original due to inflationary waves impacting all sectors and products.
The contracting authority has indicated that the project covers a section of 60 km from the Mohammedia junction to the Berrechid motorway junction, passing through the Lissasfa junction. This is one of the most complex projects to implement, as it involves the tripling of high-traffic motorway sections that serve vital infrastructure and requires the maintenance of 2×2 traffic throughout the period of the works. To do this, ADM ensured the staging of an ingenious phasing in order to minimize the inconvenience caused and to secure the surroundings of the construction site, in order to ensure that the level of service offered to the customer-user is maintained.
Thus, the planning took place in two main phases. During the first, which ran from 2016 to 2019, ADM planned preparatory work which consisted of increasing the capacity of the toll stations at the airports of Tit Mellil, Bouskoura, Berrechid and Mohammed V airport and expanding the highway more than 3 km in both directions. It should be noted that this phase mobilized a budget of 400 million dirhams, entirely financed by ADM’s own resources.
As for the second phase, it started in 2019 and was characterized by its distribution into four lots, in this case the ” Lot 1: from the Ain Harrouda junction to the Tit Mellil interchange (12.8 km)« , « Lot 2: from the Tit Mellil interchange to the Lissasfa junction (18.2 km)« , « Lot 3: from the Sidi Maarouf interchange to the Bouskoura toll station (15.3 km) ” and the ” Lot 4: from the Bouskoura toll station to the Berrechid motorway junction (10.7 km)“, noting that this phase mobilized an overall envelope of 1.75 billion DH financed by concessional loans from donors, bond loans and equity (ADM).
Said Lakhda, engineer in charge of monitoring the Casablanca-Berrechid highway widening works, explained in a statement to Hespress FR that ” this project is one of the flagship and strategic projects carried out by the national society of ADM. To minimize the inconvenience, a lot of arrangements have been made, which is why we have split the project into 4 sections knowing that the first have already been put into service. and to add that the last batches have taken up to now 9 months of work, that is to say regarding 30% progress.
« We started with a program that is very ambitious, since 2016, today we have reached the last phase and we have started these last two projects in March 2022. Over the 9 months, we have been able to have an advance compared to the initial planning which is two months and we expect to complete this work by the end of 2024, beginning of 2025“, added Omar Sikkal, general manager of ADM PROJECT.
It was only following having completed the tripling of the two lots 1 and 4 in 2021, that ADM began the expansion of lots 2 and 3, the works of which have reached a state of progress of 33% and 22%, despite the difficulties encountered along the route, particularly in terms of dealing with the very heavy traffic on these motorways. In this sense, ADM is committed to the continuity of this work at a sustained pace in order to reduce the implementation time and reduce the inconvenience caused to highway users.
In addition, ADM has entrusted the management of this complex project to its technical expertise subsidiary ADM PROJET. It provides all stakeholders with the accumulated expertise of its technicians and engineers in the construction of major infrastructure projects. This competition for Moroccan skills is at the heart of ADM’s commitments, which has set itself, among its strategic objectives, the role of locomotive of its ecosystem and precursor in terms of road and motorway infrastructures, to hoist our companies and national executives to the most high levels of technicality, competitiveness and performance.
