The Fehmarn Belt Link
Projects
The world’s longest immersed tunnel requires careful planning and meticulous preparation. LE34 is responsible for securing the acquisition of land and rights for the Fehmarn project through expropriation and voluntary agreements.
Client:
- Femern A/S
Period:
- 2010 -
Skills:
- Expropriation
- Negotiations with landowners
- GIS development
- EIA reports
- Cadastral procedures
- Setting out
- Calculation of compensation
- Active risk management
- Land consolidation
- Project management
- Documentation for the Danish Construction Act
The extensive preparations for the future fixed link under the Fehmarn Belt are already well underway, even though final approval by the German authorities is still pending. At sea, transport tunnels for vehicles and trains will be placed in a channel dredged in the seabed. And on land, roads, train stations and production areas will need to be established and natural reserves replaced. When the tunnel is finished, it will take ten minutes to reach Germany from Denmark by car and seven minutes by train.
LE34’s role in the project
LE34 has been a permanent consultant for the Fehmarn Link since 2010, advising on all types of rights and land acquisition. It is crucial to the project that there is land available for construction and establishment of the approach to the tunnel, the motorway, the new train station and production areas. In 2015, the Danish Parliament therefore adopted a Construction Act whereby the Danish state is entitled to acquire or expropriate the necessary land on a temporary basis. LE34 played a key role in identifying and defining precisely which land was needed and drew up the so-called memorandum of delivery, which forms the basis of the Construction Act.
By means of voluntary agreements and expropriations, we ensure that the Fehmarn Link has access to the land on which the future roads and other land installations will lie. So far, we have helped secure agreements on a wide range of advance acquisitions, calculated compensation and negotiated with landowners on behalf of the Fehmarn Link.
Interdisciplinary team
The team of LE34 staff attached to the Fehmarn Link project consists of chartered land surveyors, lawyers, survey technicians and technical assistants, all of whom provide surveying services of extremely high quality and a high level of expertise. We have developed an in-depth understanding of the Fehmarn project and provide a full range of consultancy services, which also make allowance for unforeseen challenges. Consequently, our consultancy helps prevent potential project delays.
On site at short notice
From our base at LE34’s Maribo office, we perform surveys and set out boundaries and sites in the project area at short notice. We also handle all of the cadastral procedures.
Gert Henningsen, chartered land surveyor and project manager, LE34
“Our in-depth knowledge of the Fehmarn Link project is the sum of all of the considerations, project details and decisions we have been involved in over many years. And we pass on this knowledge to all parties and suppliers involved in the project.”
We negotiate for Fehmarn
Our work to secure the Fehmarn Link’s access and rights to the land they need includes entering into voluntary agreements and agreeing on advance acquisitions and expropriations with the owners of the affected properties and buildings. Our employees’ work is based on their specialist expertise and experience in acquisition of land and rights. However, because LE34 has worked on the Fehmarn Link project since its very beginning, negotiations are also based on our employees’ in-depth knowledge of the individual properties in the project area and the individual landowners.
Specially designed GIS tool
Complex projects require a good overview of the numerous details. LE34 has therefore developed a sophisticated GIS tool specifically for the Fehmarn Link project, accumulating information about property, the layout of the future land installations, roads, tunnel approaches, sites for production areas, replacement of natural reserves, landowners and a wide range of other project data in one place. The GIS tool places individual details at the sites where they belong in the project area. This provides the Fehmarn Link with a valuable tool for keeping track of the project. It is user-friendly and is updated on a regular basis.
Illustrations: Femern A/S
