Emergency Design Contract To Fast-Track Fern Hollow Bridge Reconstruction
By: KDKA-TV News Staff
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - An emergency design contract will fast-track the reconstruction of the collapsed Fern Hollow Bridge and it could be completed much sooner than expected.
The Wolf and the Gainey administrations announced Friday the Biden administration's quick approval of $25 million from the recently passed infrastructure bill to replace the fallen bridge.
The feds also cut the red tape, waiving competitive bidding requirements, allowing the state to award emergency contracts to Swank Construction of New Kensington and a Nebraska-based engineering firm to oversee the cleanup and begin designing the replacement structure.
The governor's office now says that barring supply chain issues, the bridge could be completed in a year.
Fern Hollow will join an already busy construction schedule which calls for replacing the deck of the Commercial Street Bridge at the other end of Frick Park and major work on the Anderson Street Bridge at Schenley Park.
But the news raises questions about the replacement design. The failed bridge was a so-called k-frame design and is being looked at by the NTSB as part of its investigation.
At a press conference, PennDOT says it immediately inspected all five other k-frame bridges in the state, including one over Beechwood Boulevard in Squirrel Hill.
"I would say these other five bridges are in a little bit better condition. Most of them are fair or good. There are no restrictions on them, so again, there's no concern with those other bridges," said PennDOT Acting Deputy Secretary for Highway Administration Mike Keiser.
KDKA's Andy Sheehan asked if the new design would be a k-frame.
"We're still working out what that is, but I'll put it this way: I don't think we're going to be using a k-design in that restructure," PennDOT Acting Executive Deputy Secretary Melissa Batula said.
The failed bridge relied on two girders for support and PennDOT said any new structure would have multiple girders and redundancies. O'Connor said the city will have input.
"If that was the design that has failed in the past, we obviously want to ask those questions," he said.
Meanwhile, the investigation into what caused the collapse of the bridge will be long and technical, the National Transportation Safety Board said. They'll use drone footage and inspectors on the ground to look at the legs under the deck of the bridge, looking for signs of corrosion, fatigue and cracking.
No one was killed but 10 were injured when the bridge collapsed early Friday morning last week, just hours before Biden was scheduled to arrive in Pittsburgh to highlight the infrastructure law now funding the reconstruction.