Nieuwe Meersluis six-week closure for multiple works

We are closing the waterway to enable us to lift out the southern lock gate – just like the City of Amsterdam did previously in order to do maintenance work on the northern lock gate. We are doing this in order to carry out necessary modifications to the lock. Construction consortium TriAX (Besix, Dura Vermeer, Heijmans) is immediately seizing the opportunity to also carry out other work, such as the demolition of the two Schinkelbrug control towers. In addition, at the southern entrance to the Nieuwe Meersluis, we are continuing work on the ‘collision protection’ that is intended to protect the bridge from collisions in the future. ‘By combining all of the work, we can minimise disruption to the local area’, says planning engineer Emma van Dam from TriAX.  

As a result of the future widening of the A10 Zuid, the southern lock gate, which is soon to be lifted out, will ultimately be located underneath a new road bridge across the Schinkel. This will involve a range of challenges. ‘At the moment, the City of Amsterdam is still able to lift out the lock gate for maintenance by hoisting it directly upwards’, explains Dam. ‘However, in the future, it will need to be manoeuvred out underneath the bridge by rotating it through 90 degrees in the air. The existing lock structure contains a concrete component that makes this rotation impossible. We’re replacing this with a steel frame that can easily be removed whenever the lock gate is in need of maintenance.’ 

There is a control tower on both the northern and southern side of the Schinkelbrug, in precisely the location where the A10 Zuid is to be widened. The Schinkelbrug operators previously vacated the towers, when they relocated to a temporary control hut. This cleared the way for the demolition. Van Dam: ‘Our initial plan was to saw the towers into pieces from top to bottom, before lifting out the various parts. But the concrete turned out to be too brittle. We’ve therefore opted for an alternative solution.’  

We are now using a demolition robot that is lifted into the control towers by crane from above. Van Dam: ‘This makes it possible to work from the inside, very precisely, and gradually remove pieces of the tower, which are then disposed of via a chute. The equipment required for this is significantly smaller than the large cranes that we would have needed to saw the towers into pieces: this makes things safer and means that we don’t need to close the A10. The control towers have already been wrapped in scaffold netting to protect the area from falling debris. 

The Schinkelbrug features protective structures to prevent collisions with waterway traffic coming from the Nieuwe Meer. Because of the new southern bridge, this protection needs to be moved slightly to the south.  

All of this combined amounts to quite a lot of work in the space of six weeks. Van Dam laughs: ‘And that’s not even the full list, we’re also doing a lot of minor work, such as moving cables and pipelines. When something needs to be closed like this, it makes sense to do as much work as possible at the same time, to prevent unnecessary disruption.’