2015. 08. 01..
The Technology Directorate of Colas Hungária Zrt. (with the assistance of Colas SA) joined the EU-financed LIFE SustainEuroRoad project targeting the drastic reduction of road construction and maintenance activities’ effect on the environment in Europe.
The project agreement was signed by project leader USIRF (Union of French Construction Enterprises) and the European Union’s Committee on 3 July 2014. The scheme involves USIRF (France), ASEFMA (Spain), Colas Hungária Zrt. (Hungary), EUROVIA (Germany), and the ERF (European Road Federation).
The general objective is to develop and validate a highly innovative software, facilitating a major reduction in the effects exerted on the environment by road construction and refurbishment works in Europe. The main focuses are to cut back energy consumption – including the use of fossil fuels and natural
resources – and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions attributable to road construction and maintenance operations.
The development of the software was based on the SEVE Eco-comparateur, a programme already in use by the French and previously introduced in Hungary. By being able to compare CO2 greenhouse-gas quantities generated by various road-construction technologies and during the production of different materials, the numerous alternatives of a road-building project become comparable from an environmental point of view.
The LIFE SustainEuroRoad project is executed in a number of subsequent steps: the training of participants; translation of the software to languages of the involved countries; collection of data for fine-tuning the environmental model; software development; validation of the software at one construction project of
each participant; evaluation; and distribution in journals and at conferences.
So far, we have completed the trainings, the translation, and the collection of data. The next step – involving us, the employees of the Technology Directorate – will be the validation of the software, for which we have chosen the section of main road 31 between chainages 106+103 and 129+159.
