The activities of the powerful holding company are inextricably linked with the development of the national transport infrastructure.the efforts of a unique team of professionals have created the country’s most important facilities, such as BAM.
The rails stubbornly cut the taiga,
(from the VIA song “Flame”)
Boldly and directly in the heat and Blizzard.
Cheer up, guys, it’s up to us
Build an iron path,
and in short-BAM!
SK Most Group of companies is one of Russia’s leading companies in the construction industry. The activities of the powerful holding company are inextricably linked with the development of the national transport infrastructure, and the efforts of a unique team of professionals have created the country’s most important facilities. Today SK Most Group increases its experience of participating in large-scale construction projects and continues the heroic history of the company, which began on the legendary BAM.
From lake Baikal to the Amur
The company’s origins date back to 1991, when the Mostotryad-55 and Mostotrest-10 specialists created the MOST partnership during the construction of the Baikal-Amur mainline.
What was BAM for the founders of the company? Bright youth, a test of strength, a real school of life. Here they took their first steps into the profession. It all started in 1974, when the construction of the Baikal-Amur mainline was declared a shock Komsomol construction site.
Great importance was attached to its construction. First, BAM was to be the second, shorter than the TRANS-Siberian, access to the Pacific ocean. Secondly, it is a road to the riches of Eastern Siberia and the Far East, and in the future-Yakutia, Chukotka, Kamchatka and Sakhalin.
Thousands of young people from all over the USSR gathered for construction in the cold wild taiga. They built bridges over rivers and tunneled through difficult kilometers of highway.
BAM was rightly called “the construction site of the century”. The highway with a length of more than 3 thousand kilometers was built for more than three decades.
The builders needed to connect the section from the Lena river (Ust-Kut) to the Amur river (Komsomolsk-on-Amur) with a railway line. Work has been carried out along the entire route.
The Baikal-Amur mainline runs through the territory of Irkutsk, Chita, Amur regions, Buryatia, Yakutia and Khabarovsk territory. The road crosses 11 rivers, 7 mountain ranges, and more than 1000 kilometers of track are laid in permafrost areas. The builders went through 8 tunnels, built 142 large bridges, more than 200 railway stations and sidings.
BAM is the largest railway in Russia and one of the largest in the world. Today it is experiencing its second birth, the history of BAM continues.
The strong will stay, the weak will leave
For graduates of Soviet universities, BAM opened up good career prospects and gave a unique opportunity to work on large-scale projects.
According to many bamovians with experience, years later the most important thing is that they acquired a lot of professional skills, and the main thing is the ability to command actions, the ability to lead.
From 1975 to 1990, large bridges were built over the rivers Iengra and TASS-Yuryakh, Olekma, Hani, Chara, Chulman and Angarakan, as well as more than 300 small and medium-sized bridges. The work was carried out in difficult climatic conditions, on mobile soils or permafrost. Bridge builders had a particularly difficult time, their units were among the first on the highway.
As the participants of the big construction project themselves say, Yes, it was not easy, but in their youth they did not notice it. Hard work brings people together, and BAM has become for many a school of relationships between people.
Since 1987, Mostootryad-55 started working on the TRANS-Siberian railway and construction of the Severomuisk tunnel bypass. The first object on the TRANS-Baikal railway is a 205-meter bridge over the Urusha river, built in 1911. Over the summer, one team changed three spans on the bridge, repaired all connections and portals, metal and reinforced concrete abutments.
In 1991, specialists completely switched to the TRANS-Siberian railway, where they engaged in the reconstruction and overhaul of artificial structures on The Zilovo – Mogocha section.
In the 90-ies came hard times for the country, the great construction site was frozen, and many left unfinished objects, left their homes in search of a better life. But there were others – those who remained in Transbaikalia for a long time, like-minded people, friends, United by years of difficult, interesting, grandiose work on the BAM.
The basis of the company, its backbone is still made up of former bamovtsy, and it is their merit that all these years the key principles are preserved and passed on to the young.
SK Most: responsibility, ability to perform the most difficult work quickly and with the highest quality, readiness to help your colleagues at any time. All these are components of the company’s success and its authority in the market.
The impulse for the economy of the Far East
More than 2500 objects across the country – these are the results of many years of work of the SK Most holding. Among the key projects are the construction of a combined road (road and railway) Adler – station of the Alpika-Service mountain resort for the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the construction of a bridge to Russian island across the Bosphorus Vostochny Strait for the APEC 2012 summit in Vladivostok.
Having started its work in 1991 with the overhaul of the TRANS-Baikal railway facilities on BAM, today SK Most Group successfully builds and reconstructs roads, bridges and tunnels, subways, ports and berths, runways and hydraulic structures. The holding combines 8 bridge-building enterprises and 3 tunnel divisions under its wing.
Large-scale construction projects in Russia and abroad, in which the holding participates, oblige mostovikov to keep a high professional standard. At the same time, each work becomes a test of strength.
Of course, major joint projects of Russian Railways, the region and SK Most will give a powerful boost to the economy of the Far East.
Today, the holding is actively involved in the modernization of the railway infrastructure. For example, its subsidiary STROI-TREST is working on the reconstruction of 53 artificial structures on the Korsakov – arsentievka and arsentievka – Buyukly sections as part of the “re-alignment” of the Sakhalin island main line to a network-wide standard of 1520 mm.
This project has become unprecedented in its geographical distribution. Suffice it to say that it required a global relocation of equipment, materials, metal and reinforced concrete structures to the island from the mainland. Bridge builders and railway workers have successfully coped with this task, and construction work is currently underway on more than 30 bridges in Sakhalin.
SK Most Group is a participant in another priority construction project for Russia. The second Baikal tunnel, located on the administrative border of the Irkutsk region and Buryatia, is a major project to modernize the BAM and Trans–Siberian railway.
After the launch of the tunnel, the capacity of this section will increase by 2.5 times, which will ensure the development of promising rail transport on the Northern course of the East Siberian railway and on the Eastern polygon as a whole.
The construction of the Baikal tunnel began in October 2014, and in March 2018, the builders completed its sinking. More than 1,500 specialists and about 100 units of mining equipment and transport were involved in the project. Currently, work is underway to construct the upper structure of the track at the entrance sections of the object. The first train through the tunnel should pass in 2019.
Connecting coasts and countries
In the midst of the construction of the railway bridge across the Amur river on the site of the Russian-Chinese border near the settlement Nizhneleninskoye Jewish Autonomous region and the city of Tongjiang, Heilongjiang province.
The main goal of this international project is to integrate the economy of the Far East into the Asia – Pacific region. The bridge will connect the two countries, in addition, transport infrastructure will be created to provide access to the Trans-Siberian railway via the Birobidzhan – Leninsk railway line through the nizhneleninskoe-Tongjiang railway crossing to the state railway of China.
The products of mining and metallurgical enterprises of the Amur region and the EAO will be delivered via the shortest transport route from Russia to China via the new bridge.
At the end of March 2019, specialists of SC Most installed and fixed the last span of the bridge in the design position, so the bridge crossing was completely closed.
Another large-scale project of SK Most is also being prepared for completion in 2019. We are talking about the construction of a road bridge over the Amur river between Blagoveshchensk and Heihe.
For almost 20 years, Russia and China have been waiting for construction to begin, and in December 2016, a historic event took place. For the Amur region, this is the most important object of transport infrastructure. The bridge creates economic prerequisites for the implementation of a number of investment projects in the region, as it significantly reduces the cost of logistics.
At the end of may 2019, a solemn closing of the span of the bridge over the Amur river, which connected the Russian and Chinese banks, took place. Specialists of SK Most Group of companies together with Chinese bridge builders symbolically screwed the last bolts on both sides of the bridge, thereby connecting the two banks of the river.
The length of the Russian part, as well as the Chinese part, is 540 meters – this is exactly half of the total length of the bridge. At the next stage of construction, work will be performed on installing strands and tensioning shrouds, lowering the superstructure on supports and concreting the roadway plate of the bridge. For working traffic on the two lanes of the highway, the bridge will open in 2020, when border checkpoints will be put into operation.