Location Kosovo
Client Ministry of Infrastructure
Services Construction Management, Project Management
Project Value $813 Million
The transformative Kosovo Route 6 project delivered one of the country’s first four-lane highways and created a safe, high-speed transportation corridor from Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, to its border with North Macedonia. Route 6 now functions as a backbone for Kosovo’s national roadway network, facilitating economic activity and improving connections throughout the country.
The Route 6 project also links Kosovo to the Pan-European Corridor X, which connects Salzburg in Austria to Thessaloniki in Greece. Through this connection, Route 6 improves access for the Western Balkans to the port facilities of Greece as well as the mature markets of Western Europe and beyond.
Spanning 64.7 km, plus a 0.8-km semi-urban connection to the border station, Route 6 was designed according to EU (Eurocodes and Euronorms) and TEM-2002 standards. It has a design speed of 120 km/h for the 49.8 km through flat and hilly areas and 80 km/h for the 14.9 km through mountainous areas.
A remarkable feature of the project is one of the longest bridges in the Balkans: a 5.78-km span, built with precast, prestressed beams across the Lepenac Gorge. The bridge reaches a maximum pier height of 74 m and was designed and built in just 19 months.
Successfully delivering Route 6 required a detailed planning and procurement effort and a talented management and construction team, as the €705 million greenfield project was also the largest engineering-procurement-construction (EPC) infrastructure project in Kosovo’s history. To complete the project as planned, Kosovo’s Ministry of Infrastructure selected a team that included the Bechtel & Enka General Partnership as contractor and Hill International as owner’s representative. The Hill team was responsible for design review, construction supervision, and quality control, including audit testing, progress monitoring, and financial and contract management. The Ministry’s project team overcame technical challenges, such as those associated with the delivery of a bridge over Lepenac Gorge, and delivered Route 6 in just over 58 months.
