Another Croatian construction story turns stagnant.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 16th of October, 2018, the contract for the construction of the Drava bridge on the Osijek-Beli Manastir highway section on the Vc corridor, worth nearly one billion kuna, was signed way back in 2009.
Works on the actual, physical construction of this bridge, which is 40 metres longer than the future Pelješac bridge, officially began only in 2011 when Croatian Highways (Hrvatske autoceste) provided the loans for this investment.
The deadline for the completion of the works was thirty months, with the clock ticking from December 2013 onwards. The contract for the construction of the bridge was obtained by the Croatian companies Viadukt, Osijek-Koteks, Konstruktor-inženjering, Skladgradnja i Hidroelektra Niskogradnja (Constructor-Engineering, Construction and Hydroelectric Civil Engineering). While everything did indeed start to look promising, the longest bridge in the Republic of Croatia is, as Vecernji list writes, rather unsurprisingly, still not finished.
The remaining 0.3 percent of the works on the bridge have been left unfinished, as has been stated from HAC.
The recognised costs which refer to 99.7 percent of the Drava bridge came about nearly two years ago, when there was a dispute between the contractor and HAC over the cost of construction. As they state from HAC, contractors have demanded that they pay them another 202.1 million kuna. That is, of course, conditional on signing an agreement on their requirements in order to continue with the works.
But the Dispute Settlement Council, which was initially defined in the construction contract and is made up of independent experts, recognised 107.9 million kuna of these costs. On this basis, HAC recognised 94.1 million kuna. In the meantime, part of the company’s contractors came into numerous problems, and this complicated the whole situation yet further.
The result is that works amounting to a massive three million kuna haven’t been completed, and a bridge, worth a staggering billion kuna, cannot get a license obtained for it. However, even when it does manage to obtain this license, the Drava Bridge will not be open for traffic for a considerable amount of time, as no motorway has yet been built on either side.
