Sund & Bælt has made an additional payment to the main contractor, Femern Link Contractors, to prepare the first section of the tunnel trench beneath the Fehmarn Belt. The agreement covers the first 650 metres of the 18-kilometre trench in which the 89 tunnel elements are to be immersed.
The payment was confirmed by Mikkel Hemmingsen, chief executive of Sund & Bælt, in an interview with the Danish engineering publication Ingeniøren.
“We have reached an agreement with FLC that we will pay more to have the tunnel trench prepared for the first immersion,” Hemmingsen told Ingeniøren.
FemernBusiness understands that the preparation work has been carried out on an hourly-rate basis. That means the final bill depends on the actual time spent, equipment used and manpower deployed, rather than on a fixed price agreed in advance. Hourly-rate work can be costly for the client, as the financial risk from additional time and extra work lies to a greater extent with the paying party.
Paying more than it received in compensation
The tunnel trench has for several months been one of the most contentious issues in the Fehmarn Belt project. It was excavated by the Dutch consortium Femern Belt Contractors, FBC, and later accepted by Femern A/S under Sund & Bælt. Since then, the main contractor FLC has refused to approve and take over the trench.
FemernBusiness has previously reported that FBC paid compensation after parts of the trench were excavated too deep. But that compensation does not cover the additional payment Sund & Bælt is now making to FLC to move the project forward.
That emerges from Ingeniøren’s interview with Hemmingsen.
Asked whether the compensation previously paid by FBC matched the amount now being paid to FLC, Hemmingsen replied:
“No.”
When Ingeniøren asked whether FLC was therefore receiving slightly more, he answered:
“Much more.”
Hemmingsen rejected, however, that the agreement for the first 650 metres amounted to billions. He told Ingeniøren that the sum was “significantly lower”, while adding that Sund & Bælt does not comment on the financial terms of its contracts.
That leaves Sund & Bælt in the position of having first received compensation from the excavation contractor for defects in the trench, and now paying a larger amount to the main contractor to make the same trench ready for use.
The rest is unresolved
The agreement resolves only the first part of the problem. The first 650 metres correspond roughly to the section where the first three tunnel elements are to be immersed. The remaining part of the 18-kilometre trench is still subject to negotiations.
According to Hemmingsen, the parties are now working on an agreement covering the full trench.
That means the financial dispute over the rest of the trench remains unresolved. The negotiations must address both the condition of the trench and the additional requirements arising from the German regulatory approval for the project.
FemernBusiness has previously reported that FLC’s own measurements showed parts of the trench had been excavated significantly deeper than the 30 centimetres publicly referred to by Sund & Bælt. In the first sections off the coast of Lolland, the contractor’s measurements showed local deviations of up to 1.8 metres.
Hemmingsen maintains, in the interview with Ingeniøren, that Sund & Bælt has not identified over-excavation of more than 30 to 40 centimetres anywhere. At the same time, he acknowledges that deeper holes exist in the trench.
The additional payment means that the trench dispute now also has a direct financial dimension for the state-owned client.
