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Private Notes
A team of 120 men will swing 2300 tons of steel into the Harlem River, turn it 90 degrees, hoist it eight stories in the air, park it, wire it and float it into place - all in the heart of the busiest city on Earth.
The most ambitious land reclamation project in history: 3.5 BILLION dollars worth. The Palm consists of the world’s two largest man-made islands. The world’s biggest dredgers, and about 80 million cubic meters of sand and rock are needed.
One man’s obsession to build and drive the fastest car on Earth takes a team of ex-NASA and Boeing engineers to building a rocket on wheels, meant to measure 56 feet and to go 1300 kilometers per hour at Mach 1.05.
Heavily damaged in the ‘89 earthquake, the race is on to get the San Francisco Bay bridge replacement built before the next quake hits. Everything about this project is gigantic, and involves the most powerful machines on the planet.
How about powering up an entire country? Run by gas and steam turbines, this huge power plant will be one of the most massive ever built – and it will be done in a remote and inhospitable environment within a time-frame some say is impossible.
The Hadron Collider is a gigantic particle-smasher, designed to discover the origins of the universe. Awe-inspiring in vision and scope, it’s also the most expensive physics experiment in history with a price-tag of 4 billion dollars.
With a price tag of 6 Billion American Dollars, The Gotthard Base Tunnel, between Lucerne and Milan, is a mega project by any standard. With 3,000 meter-high mountains in their path, the geology under the Alps remains unknown, no matter how much exploration is done it can present surprises right up to the last minute.
At Six Flags Magic Mountain the worlds longest, fastest and tallest Flying Roller Coaster is under construction. If the Park can't get the ride up, tested and ready for the Spring break crowds 2007 this 21 million dollar investment won't be worth a penny.
Under a sweltering sun in the heart of Madrid, Spanish construction workers are working non-stop on the job of a lifetime... the M-30 Madrid project. At a cost of 3.7 billion Euros it is the largest urban tunneling system ever undertaken, and one of the most challenging.
The goal is to turn the coastal waters off southern British Columbia in Canada into the wreck-diving capital of the world by sinking massive objects, wait a few years for the fi sh to move in, and the corals to grow. This time they are sinking a retired Boeing 737.
The new 13-km Industrial Ring Road will be a combination of elevated roads, bridges and tunnels, designed to help ease the congestion in Bangkok. The centerpiece of this construction project is a bridge so huge and so awesome, that its creators have named it The Bangkok Mega Bridge.
In a rugged canyon, just downriver from the Hoover Dam, a team of construction veterans is hard at work, building the biggest concrete-arch bridge on the continent. This spectacular structure will stretch almost two thousand feet across the Colorado River, between Nevada and Arizona.
An international team of the best construction engineers on the planet are building the world's tallest skyscraper in the United Arab Emirate city of Dubai.
Following the design and construction of a new stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, that holds 60,000 people and has state-of-the-art facilities.
The world's finest bridge builders are brought together in Hong Kong for a massive challenge - creating Stonecutters bridge
The design and construction of the world's largest water park in Tenerife, boasting the tallest artificial wave and biggest man-made beach
A construction team struggles to erect a field of 60 turbine-driven windmills in the North Sea, a project that will produce enough power to run an entire Dutch city
An gold-mining company's order for the world's biggest mining shovel, to be used in its Nevada pit. Pressure increases on the manufacturers as the deadline approaches
Inside a famous Swedish hotel which is constructed from 10,000 tonnes of ice and 30,000 tonnes of snow, and boasts a frozen bar and cinema screen
In South Korea, shipbuilders have ten weeks to assemble the hull of the first oil tanker-icebreaker which features two $10million propeller units
In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a team of engineers have just one year to build the world's first rock 'n' roll theme park, Hard Rock Park.
In Odense, Denmark, three thousand shipyard workers build the world's biggest container ship in the biggest little shipyard around. They have just 45 days in dry dock to complete this mammoth vessel.
The engineers had no choice. They had to build a new floating bridge in Kelowna, British Columbia. Lake Okanagan was too deep and too muddy to sink columns to support a standard bridge so the engineers designed a bridge of nine pontoons, each as long as a Canadian football field. Then they decided to make the floating pontoons out of concrete! But, with only a dozen or so floating bridges around the world, no one on the construction team has any experience building a floating bridge. Engineers and work crews must learn from scratch how to build the massive pontoons. Then marine crews must tow the concrete behemoths across the lake and line up each pontoon to the next to tolerances of millimeters. It's a tense day when the pontoon that marine project manager Kevin Giberson and his second in command Kevin Hamakawa are towing is pushed dangerously close to submerged cables by Lake Okanagan's currents. But after two and a half years of hard work through blistering Canadian summers and frigid winters, Kelowna and the world get a new floating bridge
In Las Vegas -- the quintessential city of razzle-dazzle and bling -- MGM is going for the ultimate one-upmanship. The Hollywood lion is building a 31-hectare mini-city with all amenities for those living there or visiting. It'll cost a cool $9 billion -- the largest privately financed project in North America - ever. This is a story of a massive project being built in a very short time.
In South Korea engineers are fighting against the forces of the wild West Sea to build a mammoth bridge that will link the biggest airport to a new international investment zone.
The Aker H6e is the biggest oil rig on the planet, built for the extreme conditions of the Barents Sea, located north of Norway. Marine operations chief Knut Engebretsen and his team of Norwegian engineers have tight deadlines for some major moves to put this monster together. The oil rig is so big that half of it is being constructed in Norway and the other half is being built in Dubai where construction costs are cheaper. When the Dubai-built structure is finished, it will make the 53 day journey via the Suez Canal to Norway for final assembly. The construction crew have to 'skid' eight-thousand-tonne hull pieces on rails across a giant yard. The steel deck that goes on top of the hull weighs more than 11,000 tonnes. Raising it up in the air ten storeys will be one of the most extreme heavy lifts ever attempted by the construction crew. On top of these mega-challenges, this hardy crew of Norwegian engineers has to battle extreme bad weather along the way.
It's the ultimate engineering challenge: rescue the magnificent city of Venice, Italy, before it is drowned by the Adriatic Sea. A fantastic 5.5 billion dollar plan is taking shape. It's called the "Mose project", after the biblical saviour Moses. They're constructing 78 massive floodgates, up to 29 metres tall, that will lie on the seabed. Whenever a dangerous high tide threatens the city the gates are supposed to rise from water and hold back the sea. The dynamic woman at the helm; Chief Engineer, Dr. Maria Theresa Brotto, declares, "Without the Mose, we will lose Venice." But no one can predict when a colossal high tide will swamp the city and it's a race against time for the workers of the Mose project.
Building the Sheikh Zayed Bridge, the stunning grand gateway to the world's richest city, Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, is a king size headache for Mark Jones, the engineer assembling its giant signature arches. "It's an architect's dream, an engineer's nightmare," he says .The bridge is millions over budget and years behind schedule. It's as much sculpture as structure, and when art meets engineering, worlds collide. No one has ever built a bridge like this. Mega Builders cameras follow Jones and his crew as they solve one frustrating challenge after another, lifting and joining together 600 tonne steel segments bigger than houses with the largest crane in the Middle East to complete the South Marina Arch at the world's most difficult bridge.
South Africa has a lot riding on being the host of the next FIFA World Cup. It's important and prestigious. Cape Town is building a brand-new stadium for the occasion - with a challenging high-tech roof. The project is way behind schedule because there's a lack of skilled labour, and too few cranes to do the work. The notorious winds of Cape Town, late shipments, crane breakdowns - all of them keep this construction team on their toes.
Deep in Canada's rugged western coastal mountains a new hydroelectric project is underway. It's a 600 million dollar venture diverting massive glacial rivers into a huge pipeline built against down steep mountain slopes. In the valley below turbines will be installed to generate electricity sent out to the coast by a new transmission line carved through heavy bush. A tight group of rugged bushwackers and fearless engineers are building all of it in spectacular but remote bush where grizzlies roam and eagles soar. There's no road access so the crews fly in by seaplane to work for weeks at a time. It's a dangerous job where crews work in all kinds of weather from heavy snow with a threat of avalanches to extreme heat with a threat of forest fires. Accidents including a deadly plane crash shake the workers but don't stop them.
In Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon), engineers are on a mission to modernize. Construction is underway to raise Phu My Bridge, a brand-new $100 million cable-stayed bridge. The bridge is a cornerstone in a visionary plan of growth. Vietnam is nation rising out of a long economic slump, but as the country begins to flourish, progress is bringing gridlock to the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. The Phu My Bridge will be a critical link in a new highway system that the city's planners hope will relieve traffic congestion in the urban core. The job to solve the problem falls on the shoulders of a crack engineering team. Construction Manager Kurt Feller faces the brunt of pressure to build the bridge. He must lead the team, and deliver the bridge on its due date - Independence Day in Vietnam. It's a job the former Swiss military Sergeant takes on like a man going into battle. Australian Tim Pittaway, the Bridge Manager, keeps operations on the cable-stayed bridge deck in line and on schedule. French engineer Alain Granet is a contractor who must pull off the most dangerous lifts on the site. Vietnamese-Canadian T.T. Tran and young Vietnamese engineer Nguyen Thanh Nam round out the team in a suspense-filled drama above the Saigon River. The pressure is on the engineering team as deadlines move up and the delivery date looms.
A group of engineers in England and Wales has taken on the biggest challenge of the next Summer Olympic Games -- the construction of a complex steel-truss roof for the new Aquatics Centre. Shaped like a giant ocean wave, it's truly a high-tech wonder. Three thousand tonnes of steel will rest on only three points, like a tripod, leaving a 115-metre span of the roof totally unsupported. The fabricators and construction crews have their orders. Get this one absolutely right, because there's no room for even a millimetre of error. Only gold-medal perfection will do.
Weary commuters in Istanbul, Turkey must tough it out after the Marmaray Project is delayed four years by the discovery of the city's fourth century port with thirty-four ancient shipwrecks. It's one of the most significant maritime archaeological discoveries ever made. But, inconveniently, the port is discovered at Yenikapi, site of the biggest subway station in this $3.5 billion, seventy-seven kilometre long rapid transit project aimed at easing Istanbul's traffic woes.
In Johannesburg, South Africa, engineers are less than 2 years away from delivering South Africa's first new commuter rail line in four decades. It's called the Gautrain, and it will be one of the most state-of-the-art rail systems on the continent. The Gautrain will link three vital points with 80 kilometres of track: Johannesburg's central business district, O.R. Tambo International Airport, and central Pretoria. Planners hope it will carry up to 100 000 passengers per day, and pull thousands of cars off the area's jammed highways. A building team of elite engineers led by Ian Thoms, Nicolas Descamps, and Jeff Groves has landed in South Africa to take on the Gautrain challenge. They face an uphill battle with an invisible and unpredictable enemy - the sinkhole prone terrain near Pretoria. But despite this and other tests of their will, they stay on course. As the rail line grows, it comes to represent the unfaltering spirit of its builders, and of this rising African nation.
Return to the 57-kilometer long high-speed rail tunnel in Switzerland's Gotthard Mountain range to see what it will take to finish the project by 2017.
Returning to Tenerife to check on the world's best water park which now seems destined to remain dry after numerous problems.
Crews race against the clock to finish an important venue and signature landmark for the 2012 London Olympics.
Mega Builders return to Istanbul to update the Marmaray rapid-transit project, which continues to have delays.
Examining design and construction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, designed to withstand an earthquake.
Inside a famous Swedish hotel which is constructed from 10, 000 tonnes of ice and 30, 000 tonnes of snow, and boasts a frozen bar and cinema screen.
Mega Builders revisits previous covered projects and gives us an update to their progress.
Mega Builders return to Istanbul to update the Marmaray rapid-transit project, which continues to have delays.
