It’s been five years since work began on the Queensferry Crossing between Edinburgh and Fife, and finally the £1.4 billion construction project is almost finished.
The bridge construction features an impressive 23,000 miles of cable (enough to go around the world three times), 200 planes’ worth of steel and 150,000 tonnes of concrete, the Daily Mail reports.
The crossing is set to open later in the year, making it the third bridge over the Forth. The old Forth Road Bridge was closed last year amid safety fears, with work currently ongoing to repair the structure.
The new bridge will feature a two-lane motorway and a hard shoulder in both directions, while the current bridge will remain closed to everything apart from pedestrians, cycles and buses. It was recently described by one of the project managers as “civil engineering at its most raw and exciting”.
Upon completion, it’s thought that the bridge construction will have involved around ten million man hours and once it’s finished, it will stand at 207m above high tide and will be 50m higher than the current Forth Road Bridge.
Construction began in August 2011, with the three concrete towers finished in recent months. Now, 110 sections of deck have to be added between these towers in order to support the actual road, secured to the towers using cables.
Here at Freyssinet, we specialise in civil engineering technology, installation and consultation for projects both large and small. We originally specialised in bridge components and post-tensioning, but have also been successful in expanding our portfolio into repair, protection and structure strengthening.