The Cebu cable-stayed bridge, a Sener project, awarded in the CEMEX 2022 Awards

The cable-stayed bridge connecting the Cebu Cordova Link Expressway in Cebu, Philippines, has been awarded the prize for the best international work in the Infrastructure category in the international edition of the CEMEX Building Award 2022, a competition that recognizes the best construction projects around the world for their creativity and innovation in the use of concrete. This year’s jury selected 26 finalists from 11 countries.

In this project, entirely designed by Sener, the company also provided technical assistance during construction, together with its partner CFC (Carlos Fernández Casado, S.L.). It is a public-private enterprise of the Cebu Cordova Link Expressway, a subsidiary of Metro Pacific Tollways Corporation, the city of Cebu and the municipality of Cordova, with the Cebu Link Joint Venture as the construction consortium.

The entire project consists of a road approximately 8.5 km long that connects the islands of Cebu and Mactan-Cordova. It does so by joining the southern part of Cebu City, on the island of the same name, with Cordova. This connection may be extended in the future to Mactan-Cebu Airport, a strategic hub for the entire area of Visayas. The road runs entirely over water (viaduct or causeway), with a combination of viaducts starting on the island of Cebu that cross the navigable part of the Mactan Strait, where the iconic cable-stayed bridge is located. They continue with another access viaduct that connects the main bridge to a causeway, with a sea wall, located over shallow waters in the area facing Mactan Island, where several bridges and culverts works are located that seek to minimize the barrier effect of the causeway itself. This makes it possible to cross the Mactan Channel, allowing ships to navigate through the Cebu Strait. The most iconic part of Cebu-Cordova Link Expressway is the main bridge, a symmetrical cable-stay design.

For this complex project, Sener was the lead engineering firm in the detailed design of the entire project, which it provided as part of a temporary joint venture with its partner CFC. The consortium was responsible for the detailed design of all the infrastructure needed for the expressway: causeways, sea walls, viaducts and bridges, drainage, intertidal communication passage, road surfaces, road signs, safety barriers, lighting, as well as part of the installations: electricity and lighting supply and smart transport systems, together with their associated ducting. Sener also designed the structures needed for the toll area (booths, ducts, canopy and auxiliary electrical building). To give shape to the above, Sener did the preliminary work, which included climate and geotechnical studies, scale model testing in the laboratory and seismic risk analysis.