Contractors selected to rebuild collapsed Pennsylvania bridge

Dive Brief:

• Two contractors have been selected to reconstruct the Fern Hollow Bridge near Pittsburgh, which infamously collapsed on Jan. 28 as President Joe Biden visited the area to talk about infrastructure funding.
• PennDOT has selected the team of HDR and Swank Construction to design and construct the new bridge through a design-build partnership, according to a PennDOT press release. The project will be paid for with $25.3 million in federal infrastructure act funds, according to the project website, and will not impact any other regionally funded projects.
• The new structure will remain along the same roadway alignment and width as the original bridge. Instead of a standard linear process, multiple phases of the project will be constructed simultaneously, including the foundation, substructure, superstructure and utility relocation, in order to fast-track the project, PennDOT said. Construction will begin in late April.

Dive Insight:

Following the more than 50-year-old bridge’s collapse in January, officials moved quickly to begin repairs. The team selected a three-span continuous composite pre-stressed concrete I-beam design with integral abutments, according to the release.

“With the Fern Hollow Bridge seeing more than 14,000 cars daily, we knew it was critical to act quickly to reconstruct,” Governor Tom Wolf said in the release. “This reconstruction will allow commerce to continue without further interruptions to the lives of community members.”

The bridge collapsed in the early hours of Jan. 28 and injured 10 motorists, four of whom were taken to the hospital with injuries. A report released by the NTSB states that the collapse began on the west side of the bridge, but no definitive cause was listed.

The Fern Hollow replacement is just one of many Pittsburgh-area bridge projects currently underway with infrastructure act funding. Last month, PennDOT announced a lineup of $317 million worth of infrastructure work being performed in the Pittsburgh area. Work includes the repair and replacement of approximately 67 bridges, including 24 in poor condition, according to the release.