Wirtgen Group is not only the global market leader but also the Innovation Leader for Road Technologies

WIRTGEN GROUP offers a broad range of highly advanced and innovative equipment to suit customer’s requirements for all areas of road construction. In an exclusive interview to CONSTRUCTION OPPORTUNITIES, RAMESH PALAGIRI, MD & CEO, WIRTGEN INDIA, speaks about the products offered by the company, key features, emphasis on technology, research, design and innovation.

Your thoughts on the “Mega highways construction programme” the government is expected to release soon. Also the road transport and highways ministry has proposed to build 50,000 km of high speed (access-controlled) corridors by 2047, what challenges can be expected and how would they be overcome.

The mega highways construction programme will outline specific eligibility criteria for roads to be identified as national priorities, accompanied by modifications to the model concession agreement (MCA) to streamline infrastructure development and minimise contract disputes and litigation. Moreover, all future highway projects will be awarded under a new scheme, which is set to move away from the current approach to construction projects. This will facilitate smoother project implementation and ensure the delivery of high-quality roads and further boost the CE sector.

What are the range of road construction equipment offered by your firm. Cutting edge technologies  featured in your machines and details of the benefits accrued to your end user from the digital technologies in your machine.

The Wirtgen Group has been continuously innovating its products and all our road technology brands – Wirtgen, Voegele and Hamm are not only global market leaders but also innovation leaders. The Wirtgen Group has been consistently developing products which offer better efficiency  in terms of fuel consumption and this helps in sustainable development and less carbon emissions, lower life cycle costs and better productivity of these machines.

Give us an understanding of their key features in terms of safety, ease of operating your machines, operator comfort , cost efficiency etc their specific advantages. Also brief us on the training initiatives undertaken by your company to ensure projects are completed on time in a cost effective manner.

The WIRTGEN Group machines are designed to fully comply even with strict safety regulations. The operation in the machines is self-explanatory and does not require any special language skills. The innovative and easy-to-learn ErgoBasic operating system is every machine operator‘s dream, providing ergonomic working conditions tailored to real-life use.

Please provide details on your emphasis on technology, research, design and innovation?  What are the advancements you have introduced or plan to introduce?

To start with we have introduced the Cold Milling and Cold Recycling and these two technologies are reasonably well accepted in the market. Soil stabilization is also becoming very popular and all these technologies result in saving resources, faster construction and cost economical solutions.  The Cement Treated Base or subbase (CTB or CTSB) not only reduces aggregate requirement, but also ensures stronger foundation and reduces layers. The cold recycling reuses 100% of asphalt pavement material and only addition is bitumen 2-3% which rehabilitates the asphalt pavement to its original properties.

For Concrete paving, the Wirtgen Slipform Pavers can now offer Dual- layer concrete paving, where a single machine is used for dual layer concrete paving, the bottom layer and the top layer concrete are paved in a synchronized operation. It is additionally ensured that both the top and bottom layers are paved “Wet-in-Wet” regardless of weather or site conditions. This can be done with single paver or with two pavers where it is necessary to distribute the operating weight to two separate machines.

In Asphalt paving – the VOGELE -In Line Paving where the binder and surface courses are paved “hot on hot” in a single pass, greatly accelerating activities on a job site. In addition, it is not necessary to completely close down the road: the three machines – a paver for the binder course, a paver for the surface course and a material feeder – work “in line”, one behind the other, leaving one lane open to traffic. An ideal solution for rehabilitation of heavily travelled roads. The process is both economical and highly eco-friendly,the layer thickness can be reduced in “hot on hot” paving, thus lowering consumption of the costly surface course mix.

VÖGELE also offers an innovative and economical solution for the road construction sector with the non-contacting Road Scan temperature measurement system. The scanning and documentation of the freshly paved asphalt‘s temperature is already specified in tenders in several markets, and in others there are definitive plans to implement this.

After completion of the construction job, contractors can furnish detailed evidence that the temperature was maintained within the correct range using the recorded GPS data, including precise tracking.