Building bridges the geosynthetic way

That’s the headline in the lead article of the April issue in FHWA’s monthly publication, Focus. If you or your company is involved in the bridge building business, then read this article.

Geosynthetics has been writing about GRS bridge-abutment engineering for almost five years now. “Building the bridge of the future with GRS technology” is from the August/September 2006 issue of Geosynthetics.

That article surfaced again during the National Association of County Engineers‘ (NACE) annual conference in April, along with a follow-up featuring the GRS bridges of Defiance County, Ohio.

Two of the best technical sessions at the NACE conference featured the use of geosynthetics in bridge building.

In the first of these two, Mike Adams from FHWA continued his lead in the push for construction of more GRS bridges. Presentations featuring bridges in Defiance County, Ohio, St. Lawrence County, N.Y., and Buchanan County, Iowa, received rave reviews and dozens of eager questions.

This was an audience obviously filled with engineers who are, of course, required to “do more with less” these days. When Toby Bogart from upstate New York showed photo after photo of his GRS bridges, and concluded with: “We’re saving about 50%” [compared with traditional bridge construction], he captured the rapt attention of every engineer in the room.

In another session, GRS bridge pioneer Warren Schlatter from Defiance County explained the step-by-step process for a 130-ft. Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) project, again with the sweet phrasing: “cost savings and reduced construction time.”