News & Media

The six-lane, 1,445-ft-long Anacostia River crossing uses an above-deck arch design coupled with cable-stay bridge technology to transform the South Capitol Street corridor into an iconic, grand urban boulevard, the submitting firm says. Three sets of arches rise above deck level, creating a continuous flow as their visual line extends to water level along two…

By Thomas Murphy, Ph.D., P.E., S.E., M.ASCE, Todd McMeans, P.E., and Andrew Keaschall, P.E., S.E., M.ASCE, F.SEI The area of the country known as the Quad Cities has long been a key transportation hub for national commerce: first as a port on the Mississippi River, then as a critical railroad crossing (and the site of…

The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 is a historic example of the need for standardization. At the time, 600 different hose-coupling devices were in use in the United States. Crews responded from as far away as New York, only to find that they were unable to connect their hoses to the hydrants due to the…

Bridge design and construction are an exercise in optimizing opposing forces. As part of this, structural detailing must balance design demands with practicality. The construction engineer’s role, and specifically the detailing of integrated shop drawings, provides a unique perspective into the interface between design and construction. This experience allows us to explain why some things…

Owner: District of Columbia DOT Construction Manager: HNTB General Contractor: South Capitol Bridgebuilders Architect: beAM Structural Engineer: AECOM Erection Engineer: McNary Bergeron Article Here: MSC April 2022 – FDMB  

Owners: Maine Dept. of Transportation; New Hampshire Dept. of Transportation Lead Design Firms: Hardesty & Hanover; FIGG Engineering General Contractor: Cianbro Corp. Construction Engineer: McNary Bergeron Engineering Support: Structural Technologies Subcontractors: Case Foundation (Drilled Shaft); Shaw Brothers Construction (Earthwork); Atlantic Coast Dismantling (Demolition); Panatrol (Automation & Controls) A key feature of this project is what the team says are the first…

At the SW bridge casting yard, crews prepare to pick and set the next rebar cage. A completed span on the profiled concrete slab sits behind the rebar cage. Bold engineering changes cut time, maintained traffic and increased long-term maintenance ease on a $114.6-million upgrade of the Interstate 5/State Route 16 interchange in Tacoma, Wash. Guy…

In precast concrete segmental balanced cantilever construction, the pier segment is most often produced in a casting yard and erected on bearings and falsework. Alternatively, cast-in-place concrete pier segments have been utilized for longer spans or in areas of high seismicity where a monolithic connection to the column provides a more economical substructure design. Precast…

The emotional send-off was all one needed to see to fully understand the deep connection between a town and its 80-year-old bridge. On Sept. 20, Norridgewock, Maine—a town of roughly 3,300 people located along a bend in the Kennebec River, some 90 miles northwest of Portland—bid farewell to the Norridgewock Bridge. In an event dubbed…

Elie H. Homsi will never forget the first day that his brainchild, a pile-driving, girder-launching gantry system, went to work on a $192-million contract to build the Washington Bypass, a six-mile alternative route to Highway 17 in North Carolina. “Next to my children being born, it was the most exciting thing in my life,” says…