Honouring the traditions of construction, on 27 January a topping out ceremony was held at MONUM’s construction site in Piedruja Parish, Krāslava Municipality, where work on reconstruction and modernisation of the Pāternieki Border Crossing Point is underway. As a result of the project, crossing the Latvian-Belarusian border will not only be more efficient and convenient, but also more modern. The environment and infrastructure in the area measuring more than 15 thousand square metres will be improved.

“We symbolically celebrated the topping out ceremony by laying a wreath on the frame of the new border control building. We have constructed the foundations of the building and the load-bearing walls, the floor and roof structures. We have also started working on wall cladding with sandwich panels. We continue the process of merging the existing border control building and the new building,” Kaspars Strēlis, Project Manager at MONUM, outlines the status of works at the site.

Roadbed construction has also been started: the existing ground has been dismantled and the new sand and crushed stone bed has been built. We will continue work on the construction of the roadbed in winter conditions too. We plan to complete work on the construction of road surfaces already this spring. Extensive work is also underway to replace the roof and renovate the façade of the existing border control building and other control pavilions, which we plan on implementing before the end of April. All construction works are expected to be completed by the end of May.

The contracting authority of the project is Valsts nekustamie īpašumi VAS (State Real Estate SJSC), and its total cost is more than 3 million euro, including VAT.