More than 2700 persons participated in the construction of Viru prison

Merko Ehitus gave the buildings of Viru prison yesterday into the use of the client, the company completes the remaining works, mainly regarding landscaping and roads, by 30 July.

More than 2700 persons in total participated in the construction of Viru prison located on 16 hectares in Jõhvi, the contracts were concluded with more than 220 subcontracting companies, Keit Paal, the project manager of Viru prison in Merko Ehitus, said. “More than 600 men were together on the object during the culmination period of the construction. As regards the scales of the object, the statistics indicates that 120 cleaners participated in the cleaning of the object at the end of the construction,” Paal told. Approximately six kilometres of exterior enclosures were established in total for the prison, the prisoners are separated from the rest of the world with two metal and one concrete enclosures, which are additionally secured by the electronic surveillance, Paal described.

The object has also passed the special testing of the cell of the imprisoned persons, within which the destruction of the furniture and building was tested in the sample room and after which the adjustments had to be made in the choice of some furniture pieces meant for the cells, Paal told.

“The peculiarity of Viru prison compared to other Estonian prisons are the buildings connected with each other with the galleries which enable the prison to keep the imprisoned person in the closed rooms within the whole retention period, by permitting him to walk only on the roof of the building,” Paal said. “The main challenge of the whole project for us was the security and the complicated logistics resulting from the security requirements.”

The construction works of Viru prison were started in August 2006. Viru prison has 1000 places of cell, administrative rooms, school, church, sports hall, library, workshops and rooms of social work. The total of 340 persons start working in the prison.