Middle East
Tunnel

Relieving Amman's Traffic
with a Major Road Tunnel

The Middle East Tunnel is a major underground road structure built by CEC beneath one of Amman's busiest and most congested intersections, on behalf of the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM). The project forms part of GAM's wider strategy to grade-separate critical junctions across the capital, removing through-traffic from the surface level and dramatically reducing peak-hour delays for the hundreds of thousands of vehicles that pass through central Amman every day.

Amman's road network was largely laid out decades before the city's population and vehicle ownership reached their current scale, and many of its key intersections now operate well beyond their original design capacity. Tunnels such as this one allow through-traffic to bypass surface congestion entirely, while preserving — and often improving — pedestrian and local-access movement at grade. The result is a measurable reduction in journey times, fuel consumption, and emissions across the surrounding network.

CEC's appointment as main contractor for the Middle East Tunnel reflects our First Grade classification in Infrastructure works and our extensive experience delivering complex underground and grade-separated structures in dense urban environments — from the Al-Haramain Bridge interchange to the Safeway Bridge at the 7th Circle.

Engineering Challenges

Constructing a tunnel beneath a live, fully operational intersection in the heart of Amman presented a demanding combination of geotechnical, logistical, and urban-engineering challenges:

• Excavation beneath live traffic: The works had to be sequenced and shored so that surface traffic could continue to flow — or be safely diverted in stages — throughout the entire excavation and structural works programme.
• Amman's limestone geology: The capital sits on layered limestone and marl formations of variable strength and fracture pattern, requiring carefully designed ground support, rock bolting, and shoring systems tailored to the specific strata encountered along the alignment.
• Relocation of buried utilities: Decades of underground water, sewerage, telecom, and power infrastructure crisscross the corridor, all of which had to be located, protected, diverted, or reinstated without service interruption to surrounding properties.
• Dewatering and night-shift phasing: Groundwater control was required throughout the excavation, and a significant portion of the heaviest works — including major shoring installation and concrete pours — was carried out on night shifts to minimise disruption to daytime commuter traffic.

Scope of Work

CEC's construction scope on the Middle East Tunnel covered the full sequence of underground road infrastructure delivery: traffic management and phased diversion design; utility survey, protection, and relocation; excavation and ground support including retaining walls and shoring systems suited to Amman's limestone strata; cast-in-place reinforced concrete tunnel structure including base slab, walls, and roof deck; waterproofing and drainage systems; dewatering during construction; pavement, lighting, and ventilation infrastructure; and final reinstatement of the surface road network and surrounding public realm.

Quality & Safety

Underground works beneath live traffic carry elevated risk for both the workforce and the travelling public, and CEC managed the Middle East Tunnel with a rigorous quality and safety regime — including continuous monitoring of ground movement and adjacent structures, daily inspection of shoring and support systems, strict traffic management protocols at every shift change, and full materials testing and documentation in line with GAM's specifications and Jordan's First Grade contracting standards.