Lima VVA Documentation

Simple Road Design and Earthworks

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Background_Story

Lima VVA Background Story

Lima VVA has its origins in a project started under Østlandskonsult AS in 1994.

After several years of maintaining LIMA — a DOS-based BASIC program for road geometry and earthwork calculation — the company decided to rewrite the software in C++ for Windows. Vidar Hasfjord, a computing science student who had been hired part-time since 1991 to do LIMA 2 development and maintenance, persuaded the management to rewrite the software, based on experience he had attained with the RoadPlanner undergraduate project at University of Glasgow in 1993.

The initial version "LIMA 3.0 for Windows" was released in June 1996.

In the following years, the software was marketed and further developed by the company office in Ålesund. Meanwhile, the company changed name and ownership from Østlandskonsult to Interconsult, then to ICG, before it was acquired by COWI and the office in Ålesund was closed in 2003. The full rights to the software were then taken over by Vidar Hasfjord, the main developer, and Magnulf Rise, the founder and general manager of Rektangel AS.

The functionality of the software (renamed "Lima VVA" with the 4.8 release) was extended and maintained under Rektangel AS until 2017, when Magnulf Rise stepped down and Vidar Hasfjord assumed all rights and responsibilities. The Lima VVA software was then released with an open-source licence, making the software freely available for anyone to use.

At the same time, Vidar Hasfjord founded Hasfjord Software AS — a company providing customer support and maintenance contracts to users of Lima VVA in Norway. The company operated from 2017 to 2026. Then, with a dwindling number of customers, Vidar Hasfjord decided to retire the business, and the remaining assets of the company were acquired by Gjeilo Camping in May 2026.

During its peak decade from 2006 to 2016, Lima VVA consistently maintained between 60 and 70 active maintenance contracts throughout Norway.

Open-Source Era

Since 2017, Lima VVA is now an open-source project at SourceForge, a provider of services for collaboration on development and maintenance of free software, where developers and users can take part in discussion, support and further work on the software.

At SourceForge, Vidar Hasfjord (vattila) has also been a leading contributor to OWLNext, the framework on which Lima VVA is built.

Notable Use Cases

Over the years, Lima VVA has been used in a wide range of practical engineering tasks in Norway. Municipal engineering offices and consultants have relied on the software for local road construction and upgrades, forest and agricultural access roads, and early‑phase feasibility studies where quick geometric feedback and earthwork estimates are essential.

The VVA functionality has also supported water and wastewater trench design, helping planners evaluate gradients, depths and mass calculations. The software has also been used for vertical alignment design for small hydropower stations, which are widespread in Norway. Other applications of the earthwork functionality include landfills, sea walls and building sites, among others. A particularly notable example of an unusual application is the extension of the airfield at Vágar Airport in the Faroe Islands.

In addition, Lima VVA has been used in education at many engineering colleges around Norway, serving as a teaching tool for introducing students to road design and earthwork calculation. The ease‑of‑use of the software made it particularly attractive in the classroom, and from the earliest days, licences were provided free of charge for educational use.

Interoperability with Norkart GISLINE

Through a long-standing partnership, Lima VVA was promoted by Norkart for use alongside their GISLINE software, a popular GIS solution for Norwegian municipalities. Norkart positioned Lima VVA as a companion tool for geometric design and earthwork calculations, and added an export function to GISLINE that generated cross‑sections along a selected centre‑line for use in Lima VVA. This data exchange made it simpler for users to move from GIS‑based corridor planning to detailed vertical alignment design and mass calculations. Conversely, 3D geometry of the construction could be exported from Lima VVA back to GISLINE for visualisation and embedding into the terrain model.

As part of this partnership, Norkart also provided courses and training material for using Lima VVA and GISLINE together.

Norkart's takeover bid

In early 2010, after preliminary discussions over the previous year, Vidar Hasfjord and Magnulf Rise met with Norkart's board and executive team to explore a possible takeover of Lima VVA. Norkart wished to integrate the functionality of Lima VVA into their own solutions, and proposed acquiring the rights to the software while hiring Vidar Hasfjord to lead the integration effort. However, the parties were unable to agree on key terms — particularly valuation, the role and compensation of Rektangel AS, and the long‑term vision for Lima VVA's development — and the deal ultimately fell through. Even so, both sides agreed to continue the collaboration.

Credits

The following are notable contributors to the Lima VVA software, in order of appearance:

Vidar Hasfjord — the main developer and current owner.
Jan Gunnar Moe — Vidar Hasfjord's former programming teacher, who recommended him for the LIMA 2 development and maintenance job at Østlandskonsult AS, summer 1991.
Magnulf Rise — then manager of Østlandskonsult's local office in Ålesund, who hired Vidar Hasfjord for that job. While Magnulf was at the periphery of the project for the next few years, he was vital in securing the rights to the software and continuing its maintenance when the office closed in 2003. As the founder of Rektangel AS the same year, he played a central role in guiding the further development of the software, while providing marketing, training and customer support through his company until 2017.
Harald Valen — a civil engineer at Østlandskonsult AS Ålesund, who was Vidar Hasfjord's main mentor from 1991 to 2003, teaching him road design and earthwork calculation, while leading the software feature requirements, testing, deployment and customer support.
The RoadPlanner Team — Øyvind Brande, Tor Erlend Fægri, Arne Hatlen, Vidar Røren and Vidar Hasfjord, who as part of an undergraduate project at University of Glasgow in 1993 explored modern object-oriented design and C++ implementation of a GUI software application inspired by the LIMA 2 functionality. Tor Erlend deserves extra credit for his assistance on the LIMA rewrite in 1995, as well.
Robert Ekroll — programmer assistant on the LIMA rewrite in 1996 and main developer of the help system released with LIMA 3.5 in 1998. His good work greatly eased the later transition from WinHelp to HTML Help. Robert also assisted with the development of external support modules for calculation of horizontal alignment, cross-sections and 3D geometry, functionality that has since been integrated into the Lima VVA application itself.
Kjell Krüger Næss — our primary contact at Norkart, who was instrumental in establishing the marketing and sales partnership between Norkart and Rektangel, and contributed greatly to sales, training and customer support. Always supportive of Lima VVA, Kjell provided steady encouragement and valuable feedback, even in difficult times.
Arve Hasfjord — an independent civil engineer (coincidentally related to Vidar Hasfjord) who also showed great interest in the software, providing valuable feedback and assisting with customer training.
Great users — who provided constructive and supportive feedback; Thor Egil Lauvvang, Jan Andreassen, Håvard Buset, Oddbjørn Ringset, Håkon Kvile, Odd Ivar Ekker, Marit Pettersborg, Arne Holen and Fríður Dalsgarð, to name a few.
The OWLNext Community — the administrators, developers and users who kept the Object Windows Library — at the core of Lima VVA — alive and well for all the years since Borland abandoned it in 1997. In particular, Ognyan Chernokozhev, the project's lead administrator, whose steadfast efforts over decades have ensured that the library has kept evolving alongside modern C++ and Windows developments.
Microsoft Copilot AI — helped with the English translation of Lima VVA 5, and has also assisted with documentation and code review.