Route No. 6

Location Kosovo

Client Ministry of Infrastructure

Services Construction Management, Project Management

Project Value $638 million

The transformative Kosovo Route 6 project was one of the country’s first four-lane highways and created a modern transportation corridor from Kosovo’s Albanian border to its North Macedonian border. Route 6 now functions as a backbone for Kosovo’s national roadway network, increasing economic activity, spurring trade, and improving cultural connections along a safe, high-speed route.

Critically, the Route 6 project also connects to the pan-European “Corridor X” network, which connects Salzburg in Austria to Thessaloniki in Greece via Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia. Through this connection, Route 6 provides greatly improved access for the Western Balkans to the port facilities of Greece as well as the developed markets of Western Europe and beyond. 

Route 6 spans 64.7 km, plus a 0.8 km semi-urban connection to the border station, and was designed according to EU (Eurocodes and Euronorms) and TEM-2002 standards, with a design speed of 120 km/h for the 49.8 km of flat and hilly areas and 80 km/h for the 14.9 km mountainous area motorway. 

A remarkable feature of the project is the longest bridge in the Balkans: a 5.78 km span, built with precast, prestressed beams along the Lepenac gorge. The bridge reaches a maximum pier height of 74 m and was designed and built in just 19 months.

Realizing Route 6 as planned required a detailed planning and procurement effort and a talented management and construction team, as the €705 million greenfield project was also the largest engineer-procure-construction (EPC) infrastructure project in Kosovo’s history. To achieve the project, Kosovo’s Ministry of Infrastructure selected a team that included the Bechtel & Enka General Partnership as contractor and Hill International NV as employer’s representative, responsible for design review, construction supervision, and quality control, including audit testing, progress monitoring, and financial and contractual management. This team delivered the project in just over 58 months and realized several technical achievements, including completion of a bridge over Lepenac gorge.

ro. 6
navigate_before   navigate_next