U2 in Vienna: When two giants become one

The wind buffets a grey sheet of cloud across the sky. It whistles through the equally grey urban canyons. The rain has just stopped falling; the grey streets are still wet. A mass of cars roars past us. You can hardly hear yourself speak. So, for ten minutes we walk side by side in silence. Until we reach a sign – with a logo that resembles a tunnel boring machine, or TBM. Next to it are the words “ARGE U2”. We continue along the gravel path until we reach the end. We find ourselves looking down at Matzleinsdorfer Platz. These grey surroundings are the setting for Vienna’s greenest project. This is where, starting in 2024, a TBM will burrow through the subsoil of the Austrian capital.

Turning around, we find a number of portacabins stacked side by side and on top of each other to form a well-equipped site office, including a kitchen with a large TV and a meeting room with a digital whiteboard. We are meeting the PORRians who are jointly responsible for the project: Harald Glösl, second technical managing director of Tunnel Construction, office manager Artur Herz, deputy project manager Peter Matulik of Railway Construction and Construction Engineering, and administrative project manager Christoph Emer. We are talking to them about the construction scheme and the cooperation between the office and the construction site, between different departments, and between two companies that are always perceived as competitors. We soon realise that there is only one team here, one community, one unit.

The companies PORR and STRABAG are visible everywhere you look – on banners, construction fences, and machines. Nevertheless, the shared logo brings people together. It transforms two companies into a single internal joint venture. It helps overcome differences that were never that large in the first place. “PORR and STRABAG aren’t that different in how they act and think,” says Peter Matulik. “There are more discussions between the various trades. Tunnellers from PORR and STRABAG usually get on well together. You are more likely to encounter differences of opinion between foundation engineers, civil engineers, and tunnellers from the same company.”

According to the deputy project manager, this is due to their different requirements, tasks, and needs. For example, tunnellers are used to working on the same construction site for several years. Special civil engineers, on the other hand, are hardly ever on the same project for more than two or three months. They work different hours, their accommodation varies – some live in a portacabin village, others in a boarding house, and a few are lucky enough to have a flat nearby. So, there is plenty of fuel for disagreement. “You have to talk to people, reach out to them, and explain why something is the way it is. No matter how different their requirements are, you have to treat everyone the same,” says Artur Herz. “After all, we spend several years on this project,” adds Harald Glösl, “so it’s important to get along.”

“They have a larger diameter than the tubes to accommodate the platforms and other factors. That’s why we use both: cyclical tunnelling with excavators and jetcrete in the stations and emergency exits, and continuous tunnelling with the TBM, which is then driven through the stations,” explains Peter Matulik. Once the tunnel boring machine has arrived at its destination, Augustinplatz, it will be brought up to the surface and transported back to Matzleinsdorfer Platz, from where it will dig the second, western tube. We decided to take a closer look at this construction site.