The appointment of Guy Taylor as the new project director marks more than just a change at the top of a billion-dollar project. It shows how Sund & Bælt has taken the lead over the Fehmarn tunnel and brought the project under its own logic. After a year of delays, disputes, and technical challenges, patience has run out. Now it's about management, pace, and control.
The construction, which is to connect Denmark and Germany with an 18-kilometre-long tunnel, is facing its most crucial phase. The tunnel trench has been rejected by the contractor Fehmarn Link Contractors (FLC), the Ivy vessels still lack regulatory approval, and no one knows when the first tunnel element will be placed at the bottom of the Fehmarn Belt.
The delays have eroded the schedule, and the collaboration between the client and the contractor has long been characterised by what people around the project call a contract-driven approach, where the parties negotiate contracts instead of solving problems, instead of the project-driven spirit of cooperation and pragmatism on which the project was originally built. On top of that comes a financial claim of 14.5 billion kroner from the contractors in FLC - as the icing on the cake in a project where progress has long since become a struggle.
For far too long, Sund & Bælt has stubbornly insisted that the tunnel would be ready in 2029 - long after no one on the construction site believed it. The contractors knew it, the employees knew it, and the readers of FemernBusiness have known it.
A change that was in the cards
Henrik Vincentsen has led the project through the first major construction years. He has provided structure and calm, got the casting in Rødbyhavn in place, and ensured that the first elements could become a reality. But negotiations with the contractors have reached an impasse, and the project has lost momentum. When CEO Mikkel Hemmingsen in the press release talks about “a new phase” and “new competencies”, it is a polite way of saying that the group is now taking control closer to itself.
New construction division
On 1 October, Sund & Bælt consolidated its major projects - including the Femern connection - into a new construction division. Officially, it is to strengthen the coherence of the group's construction work and create joint management across the projects. The division is led by Martin Russo.
Femern A/S fades out of the picture
The press release, which came on Friday morning, does not mention Femern A/S with a single word. Everything is communicated in the name of Sund & Bælt, and Guy Taylor is referred to as the project director for the Femern Belt project - not as the CEO of Femern A/S. It is not a linguistic detail, but a signal. Femern A/S, which was established as an independent state-owned company and still is, today effectively functions as a division under Sund & Bælt. The independence that once defined the project no longer exists. Where it was previously the CEO of Femern A/S who led the project, it is now a project director in Sund & Bælt's construction division.
A new course
The appointment clearly reflects that Sund & Bælt's board has desired a new course. Several of the members know Guy Taylor's world from the inside. Erik Skotting, former technical director at Metroselskabet, worked with him on the Metro Cityringen and knows how he leads large, complex projects. And Michael Hannibal, partner at Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and former top executive at Siemens Gamesa, represents the international experience that the group is now orienting towards.
The appointment fits perfectly into that network. It is a sign that the group is not only seeking technical competence but also the type of international relations and decision-making power that characterise the environments Hannibal and Skotting come from.
The new man in the engine room
Guy Taylor brings more than two decades of experience from tunnel projects in Europe and Asia. He has been involved in building the Metro in Copenhagen, the Söderström tunnel in Stockholm, and most recently held leading roles in Singapore's Land Transport Authority. He knows Danish project culture and international contractors, and he knows how to drive a project forward against headwinds.
Sund & Bælt itself calls it a “new phase” for the project, where collaboration with the contractors must take place “in a new way”. The words sound harmless but contain a clear signal. After a period where work has stalled, the group wants to change both the form of collaboration and management style.
The big test awaits in getting the collaboration with Femern Link Contractors back on track - the international consortium responsible for the actual tunnel construction. This is where the challenges converge: the tunnel trench has still not been handed over and approved, the Ivy vessels are awaiting approval, and the billion-dollar claim of 14.5 billion kroner looms like a shadow over the project. It is precisely here that management will be tested - not only for Guy Taylor, but also for Mikkel Hemmingsen, who as director of Sund & Bælt has made the project his own. If the two can re-establish trust with the contractors and get the pace of work on the seabed moving, the project can regain its direction. If not, the Femern tunnel risks being caught in the same conflicts that have already cost both time and credibility.
