Re-routing pipelines for new light rail transit

Light rail transit is making its entry in the bigger cities of Denmark, in the capital area with 29 stations between the cities Ishøj and Lyngby to open by 2025. The light rail system is a comprehensive project, as a large number of pipelines will have to be rerouted. VEKS is among the more than 50 pipeline owners who will have to reroute their pipelines. Due to the Danish guest principle VEKS must move pipes in their existing piping system to ensure that no operational problems will arise for the utility companies and the light rail. One of the places where VEKS will need to restructure is in the cities Glostrup and Vallensbæk, where ISOPLUS’s part of the project began in June 2019 and completed in March 2020. 

ISOPLUS was responsible for the supply of district heating pipes and components, as well as joint and alarm installation on VEKS' affected district heating lines. The delivery consisted of 600 meters of ø323-500/610-900 in series 2. To avoid having to move all existing pipes and to limit possible difficulties for the welding and joint work, two z-bends had been produced. The custom-made z-bends with a length of 5 m were bent with induction heat from a special supplier and then wrapped and insulated by ISOPLUS. Also quite noteworthy for this project is the fact that it fell under the Pressure Equipment Directive (PED). District heating is normally not included in the directive, but due to higher temperature and pressure requirements than usual Danish law requires district heating pipelines to follow the directive as well. 

This means that the project was subject to special requirements for design, manufacturing, monitoring and control. Therefore, all products for this particular project, including weld bends and prestressing elements, had to be delivered with 3.1 certificate from a PED-approved steel plant. The main contractor, NCC, had chosen to run this project with LEAN. This brought an optimization of all processes and thus ensured NCC to be at the forefront of any challenges. The cooperation was measured continuously through KPIs. This helped to ensure that potential challenges of the project were made visible to all involved parties and acted as an extra support in the process.