Roads Without Potholes: Lippe District Receives Innovation Award

Lippe District's road project received the PPP Innovation Award in Berlin yesterday. District Administrator Heuwinkel accepted the award at the Efficient State Convention. State Secretary Gatzer of the Federal Ministry of Finance was patron of the event.

The road project in Lippe, which is unique in Germany, is groundbreaking for lasting and efficient road construction without potholes.

As of July 01, 2009 the Lippe District assigned construction and maintenance of its district road network to a private company for about 25 years. Based on the efficiency analysis, the district will save between 9% and 11% compared to its previous conventional maintenance setup. These savings will now be available for other projects in the district.

"We are very glad that this year again one of our projects received an award," noted Dr. Ute Jasper, attorney and partner at Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek. She had designed the project with the district and provided legal counsel from the beginning. This has already been the second award for the road project. In 2008, it had received a special award in NRW.Bank's ideas competition. In addition, it had been a pilot project of the Ministry of Finance in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The departement of Dr. Jasper has seen its projects receiving awards numerous times already. In 2009, the partial privatization of Krefeld harbor received an award.

Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek is a large independent German law firm with more than 200 lawyers. The firm has seven offices in Germany and offices in Brussels and Zurich. In the field of public infrastructure, it ranks among the leading law firms in Germany.