Soesdyke-Linden Highway

First opened in 1969, the Soesdyke-Linden Highway is the main route that connects the village of Soesdyke on the eastern bank of Guyana’s famed Demerara River, to the mining town of Linden. After so many years in operation, the highway started showing signs of wear and tear and the Work Services Group, acting on behalf of the Government of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, engaged Beston to conduct both the feasibility study and the designs for the rehabilitation of this much-travelled route.

One of the key issues presented was the improvement of road safety and the rehabilitation of the pavement; Beston’s final design covers all activities necessary to accomplish a detailed design of the current roadway to a paved two-lane undivided road with paved shoulders, designed for speeds of 80–100 kilometers per hour based on national standards, with modifications as necessary to suit local conditions and needs.

This multi-phase process included conducting detailed Technical and Economic Feasibility, and Environmental and Social Impact Assessment Reports; conducting the topographical surveys and reviewing government cadastral sheets; and reviewing all available information that would lead to the preparation of detailed designs, drawings and technical specifications as necessary for all civil, electrical, structural works and all road countermeasures under the project.

The Soesdyke-Linden Highway was a historical project for the Beston team: to date, it is the longest continuous roadway we have designed. Rising to the challenge of the job, we invested in a drone and trained our team in new technology. We manually set ground control points, collected drone flight data, then processed that data through Virtual Surveyor – a programme that allowed the surveys to be completed in a substantially shorter period of time, as it eliminated the need to despatch surveyors into tedious, lengthy, and even potentially dangerous conditions. Although there was the necessary learning curve that comes with any new technology, we are glad to have implemented it as our experience gained will translate into drastically reduced timelines on future projects.