Athabasca River Bridge, HWY 63

Alberta, Canada

Project Description

A new steel girder bridge on Highway 63 in Fort McMurray was constructed parallel to existing bridges to almost double the current capacity. The city of Fort McMurray has nearly doubled in population in the past 5 years and this project was needed to facilitate continued development of Alberta Oil Sands.

Owner

Alberta Ministry of Transportation

Contractor

Flatiron Constructors Canada Ltd.

Designer

CH2MHILL

Our Role

McNary Bergeron & Associates provided a peer review of the superstructure incremental launching scheme. This included design checks of the superstructure, substructure, and temporary launching system components.

Total Contract Value

$127M CAD

Timeline

2009

Construction Method and Specifications

The bridge is 472 m long and consists of ten 3.0 m deep constant depth steel plate girders. The bridge was launched incrementally from a launching bed behind Abutment 2 over temporary rollers at each pier.