Interchange project wins major engineering award

The Section 5 Palmetto SR826/836 Interchange project in Florida has won the 2016 FICE Engineering Excellence Grand Award in the Structures category.
December 11, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
The new interchange offers increased capacity and safety and helps cut congestion

The Section 5 Palmetto SR826/836 Interchange project in Florida has won the 2016 FICE Engineering Excellence Grand Award in the Structures category.

FINLEY Engineering was the engineer of record for the four segmental bridges, Number 9, 11, 15 and 19, and provided construction engineering expertise. The segmental bridges were precast, balanced cantilever and erected with a 140.2m launching gantry. The bridge lengths varied from 335.3m to 746.76m in length and are 14.35m-wide, with a maximum span length of 81m. The curved segmental bridge ramps are the third level of the interchange with radii down to 180m and have a maximum superstructure deck height of 29m. above the proposed ground. All of the bridges are supported on 610mm pile foundations and reinforced concrete piers and caps. The project was carried out for 2697 Florida Department of Transportation, the contractor was the Community, Condotte, De Moya Joint Venture and the prime design consultant was BCC Engineering.

The bridge design offered unique challenges integrating underlying roadways, canals and MOT requirements into the layout of these segmental bridge ramps. This project was constructed in the Miami International Airport flight path and had FAA Requirements. The high level segmental flyovers are built over multiple roads that carry 430,000 vehicles/day and are the tightest elevation curves erected in the United States. The all overhead erection eliminated the need for falsework and cranes and eliminated five MOT phases that would have impacted traffic, thereby providing a safer work environment. FINLEY integrated the design into the construction while satisfying the strong aesthetic requirements. The design reduced maintenance and construction costs with the use of external tendons, Diabolos and deviators. The use of polystyrene in the hollow pier columns, except at the base of the caps, eliminated the need for interior formwork and reduced the overall mass of the structure and concrete required.

Road Structures

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Formwork innovations help bridge building
    July 7, 2015
    A series of formwork developments are helping with challenging bridge construction projects around the world - Mike Woof writes In the Polish city of Krakow, a cost-effective cable stayed bridge is being constructed using a balanced cantilever technique. The current expansion of the Krakow metropolitan railway network (KST) requires the building of a crossing of the Krakow-Plaszow railway junction. Ensuring that daily rail operations remained unaffected during the construction of the 252m long crossing w
    Read More
  • Brisbane's highway of distinction
    August 2, 2012
    A massive AU$2 billion update of the Gateway Motorway in Queensland is underway to improve an infrastructure stretched by population boom. Report and photographs by Adrian Greeman Just 20 years after the Australian city of Brisbane built its Gateway Motorway with a high slim signature bridge dominating the river skyline, the road is being completely revamped. Some 12km of urban route on the south of the Brisbane River is being expanded to take much increased traffic levels; the north is getting a completely
    Read More
  • Formwork solutions for bridge maintenance and repair
    January 6, 2015
    An array of innovative formwork solutions have helped in the repair and construction of key bridge links - Mike Woof writes Formwork producers are continually developing novel solutions for bridge maintenance and construction applications. Several key structures have benefited from the novel use of formwork systems, with suppliers such as Doka, PERI, Pilosio and RMD all working on important structures in recent times. In Estonia, construction work is underway on the bypass around Tartu, the country’s
    Read More
  • PERI’s balancing act at the Harpe Bru Bridge in Norway
    May 24, 2016
    Plans for the European Route E6 expansion in Norway include the 320m-long Harpe Bru Bridge over the Gudbrandsdalen Lågen River, at Sør-Fron in Oppland province. For the superstructure, PERI civil engineering technology experts developed a balanced cantilevered solution based on the VARIOKIT Engineering Construction Kit. Statens vegvesen, Norway’s agency for public road building, selected an extradosed cable-stayed bridge design – the first such bridge in Norway. It combines the load-bearing behaviour
    Read More

Highlighted Content