Best Place to Work
Welcome to PORR's Ressources Competence Centre
As a production facility and service centre for all of PORR markets, the Resources Competence Centre is unique. A report from Vienna-Simmering.
The barrier opens. And what stretches out behind is something of a construction wonderland. Tanks as tall as a skyscraper. Shiny boilers. Dented barrels. There’s smoke. There’s rattling. There’s the smell of asphalt and petrol. Dozens of construction machines are parked and serviced here. Lorries come, unload or load something and drive off again. Garages next to office buildings. The PORR Campus next to the PORR company fire brigade. And in the background, the 55-metre-high asphalt mixing plant is receiving a parallel drum. Wherever you look, something is happening at the PORR site in Vienna-Simmering. And in the middle of it all is the Resources Competence Centre.
Did you know ...
… what belongs to the Resources Competence Centre?
We drive at walking pace through the construction wonderland to a yellow office building. Managing director Thomas Hittler, production manager Thomas Deimel, Jürgen Goritschnig from the Bautech laboratory and plant manager Klaus Lerchbacher await us on the first floor. They tell us everything there is to know about the Resources Competence Centre in an hour. For example, that in addition to the independent and accredited Bautech laboratory, the Schwarzl Group is also part of the department. Their companies, in turn, are among the leading suppliers of sand, gravel, ballast, high-grade chippings, scalpings, slag chips, granulated blast furnace slag, fly ash and ready-mix concrete. The Production Site Management and PORR Technology Management and Innovation departments are also part of the Competence Centre. As is the bitumen and chemicals sector, which we are taking a closer look at.
… that without bitumen there would have been one less wonder of the world?
The sun peeks out from between the bitumen tanks as we leave the meeting room and walk into the building opposite. This is where the magic happens, you could say. But of course this has nothing to do with magic. So it should actually read: this is where the chemistry happens. This is because bitumen is obtained from crude oil by vacuum distillation. It also occurs in sedimentary rocks. And in natural asphalt, which consists of crude oil, which in turn has formed over many millions of years from organic marine deposits. There are even entire lakes of asphalt, some with a bitumen content of up to 95%. Incidentally, the term bitumen comes from Latin and means earth pitch. Neanderthals were already using it 70,000 years ago. Later, in the area known as the Fertile Crescent – which stretches from the Persian Gulf to Jordan and is considered to be the origin of agriculture and animal husbandry – grain was transported in baskets compacted with plaster or bitumen. That was 12,000 years ago. And the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, are said to have been sealed with bitumen. But back to the present. And to Simmering
… which products PORR manufactures here?
The production plant is certified in accordance with ISO 9001, quality management, ISO 14001, environmental management, and OHSAS 18001, occupational health and safety management. In Simmering, PORR develops, manufactures and sells various bitumen-based products. These include polymer-modified bitumen, anionic and cationic bitumen emulsions, hot-processed joint sealants, fluxed binders, bitumen primers and thick coatings and even reactivecuring high-performance asphalt. Our colleagues also have various concrete admixtures in their portfolio, such as concrete plasticisers, air-entraining agents, release agents, dust binding agents and so on. Incidentally, the bitumen drums are returned to Simmering when they are empty, cleaned and then reused.
… that PORR ensures the nationwide production of high-quality asphalt in Europe?
Emulsions, bitumen, mastic, hot, low-temperature or cold asphalt based on renewable and environmentally friendly raw materials – PORR's Resources Competence Centre develops the best solution for every requirement. In Austria alone, PORRians operate 29 asphalt mixing plants. These produce around three million tonnes of asphalt every year. We take a close look at the plant in Simmering. At the beginning of the year, it has just received a parallel drum. Like so many things here, this is also unique. Everything is now finished. And the plant can now produce 100% recycled asphalt. In theory. But this is not practical. In part because the quality would suffer too much. But the proportion of recycled material in the asphalt mix will be doubled from 20 to 40% in a first step. Together with the Bautech laboratory, efforts are also being made to minimise temperatures during production and therefore CO2 emissions.
The pioneering spirit can be felt everywhere. The in-house developments and products from Simmering are innovative and contribute to ensuring safe and durable road infrastructure throughout Europe. This is because the Resources Competence Centre is a service centre for all PORR markets. And anyone who hears the colleagues we have met here will understand: it’s not just about what they say. Above all, it’s about how they say it. Full of passion. Everyone is very proud of what they do. And everyone has expertise that is second to none. A centre of excellence, you might call them.
Contact
If you have any questions about the bitumen & chemicals sector, please send an e-mail to bitumen-chemie@porr.at.
