Pennsylvania Rapid Bridge Replacement Project

Construction Management, LiDAR, Survey | Pennsylvania | Back

Challenge

The Pennsylvania Rapid Bridge Replacement project reconstructed/rehabilitated 558 bridges and box culverts in just five years. The narrow time frame became an immediate challenge for control, topographic data collection, design, and construction.

Solution

Innovative approaches using highly accurate GPS equipment were required to establish control, and mobile LiDAR greatly reduced the initial survey work. Conventional surveying upstream and downstream was performed from March through September 2015 on the first phase of 66 bridges. Because many of these bridges were small rural structures, Kapur used a GIS system to develop the quickest means of collecting data and reduce costs.

Kapur began by establishing controls and acquiring LiDAR data in late December 2014. Follow-up conventional design surveys were conducted from spring through fall of 2015.

Construction progressed at a rapid pace: 77 bridges were constructed in 2015, 252 bridges were constructed in 2016, 179 bridges were constructed in 2017, 40 bridges were constructed in 2018, and 10 were constructed in 2019.

Services Provided

  • Survey

Industries Covered

  • Survey
  • LiDAR
  • Construction

Results

Although construction costs for replacing over 550 bridges in five years were roughly $1 billion, the project was staged to reduce survey, design, and construction costs by regionally phasing the work.

The average cost savings by “batching” these projects was $400,000 per bridge replacement. With the bridge replacement project extending the life of the 550 bridges anywhere from 40 to 100 years per structure, the cost savings is estimated to be much larger than the actual cost of the project.