The Harris County Toll Road Authority (HCTRA) is temporarily pausing bridge construction work on the main pylons of the cable-stayed portion of the Sam Houston Tollway Ship Channel Bridge replacement project.
The agency says it is halting construction so that it can continue to review the engineering design of a section currently under construction. Drivers in the area will continue to see work progressing on the rest of the project, including the approaches and casting yard, while the pylon work is paused.
HCTRA says it is confident in the process and teams developing the project, but hired an independent consultant—COWI North America, Inc.—to conduct a complete independent review of the Ship Channel Bridge engineering design performed by FIGG Bridge Engineers Inc.
This comes only a few months after the design firm was named in the National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) investigation of the FIU bridge collapse in Miami from March 2018. The NTSB said in its final report, released in November, that the probable cause of the bridge's collapse was the load and capacity calculation errors made by FIGG in its design of the structure. HCTRA made no mention of FIGG's connection to the FIU Bridge in its news release regarding the independent review.
The announcement also comes just a few months following the suspension of design work on the Harbor Bridge project in Corpus Christi. The Texas DOT halted design work after FIGG was removed as lead designer on the project.
COWI’s full independent review of the project is anticipated to be complete by March 2020. In the meantime, according to HCTRA, the consultant has identified an issue related to the design of the curved portions of the pylon legs, and briefly pausing bridge construction will allow for FIGG as the engineer of record to design a solution, subject to review by COWI, and incorporate it into construction before the work progresses. When FIGG and the independent consultant reach concurrence on a necessary design solution, work will resume on the pylons. HCTRA anticipates that this could take approximately three weeks.
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SOURCE: Harris County Toll Road Authority
