Crew Sets More Than Four Million Pounds of Structural Steel Since May

Creating lifts from barges is never an easy task, especially with flooding weather in Shreveport. Rain this year delayed work and forced the team to make up lost time. Since they started at the end of May 2007, the crew has set 4,039,800 pounds of structural steel. The crew constructed five spans or 1,475 liner feet of bridge with the longest span reaching more than 375 feet. Girders ranged from 11 feet to more than 14 feet of wall and weighed 123, 000 pounds each. Flood waters returned at the end of June, and the crew was forced to move out of the river. They worked on two spans over land until the flood receded.

The crew still had two more piers to cap, and then erected the remaining three spans of structural steel in late September. Wayne Simmons, steel foreman, and his crew worked long hours and weekends to get the steel up and ready before the winter delays began. Bill Colley, foreman, and his crew followed close behind Simmons’ crew setting deck forms and detailing structural steel with completion set for the first week of December, followed by the completion of the concrete work by the end of January. “The Red River normally floods early in the year and being able to get the working barges out of the river before the year end could save us months of liquidated damages on this calendar day project,” said Bill Kingrey, project manager. On the center span, the team cantilevered the steel over 146 feet from each pier and with the help of varying temperatures was able to install the last 83 feet of drop-in section. “At times we were a couple of inches too close and had to wait for the temperatures to drop in order to make up the splices. Other times we were to far apart and had to wait for it to warm up for the steel to expand enough to allow us to install drift pins and bolts,” said Kingrey. “This was all pretty big steel and working on barges in the river more than 100-feet high was nothing to take lightly.”