Name:
Todd Scharf
Position and Company:
Direction of Operations, ARC Construction Services, Inc.
ARC's Towson Bridge Project was a project which required hundred of hours of planning months in advance to complete the job in less than 36 hours. ARC had been selected by the client to perform this work because of the outstanding performance record for other projects at the property. ARC's record gave the owner the confidence that ARC could get this work done in a timely, efficient, and most of all safe manner.
The Towson Bridge project was the removal of a pedestrian bridge spanning Fairmount Avenue in Towson MD. The Bridge went from the Sheraton Hotel on the east side of Fairmount Ave. to Towson Town Center on the west side of Fairmount Ave. For months the Bridge had been closed to pedestrian traffic because of the deteriorating conditions of its support columns. The owners of the bridge had decided it was time to remove it completely and remove and public safety hazard which may exist due to the poor condition. The owners left it up to ARC to determine the best means and methods for getting this done.
Several constraints were placed on ARC to do this project:
- Fairmount Avenue is a major thoroughfare in Towson and shut down of the roadway had to minimize the impact to traffic patterns as much as possible
- Once start, the bridge demolition could not stop without putting the public at risk
- The road way beneath the bridge needed to remain in tact
- The Sheraton across the street and the mall would both remain open and active throughout the bridge removal process.
These constraints led ARC to the following plan of action.
- The bridge removal work would need to be done on the weekends so as to mitigate the impact to business traffic
- The bridge would need to be completely removed at one time so as to prevent any public risk of people driving under a partially demolished bridge
- The bridge would need to be dissembled via the use of two 400 ton cranes, the same way it was put together, so as to prevent damage to the adjacent buildings and roadway.
The final result of all the planning and effort was that on a Friday night in August, ARC, and a team of 5 other contractors and over 50 workers mobilized to begin dissemble of the bridge. Less than 36 hours later, a full 21 hours ahead of schedule, the bridge and support columns would be gone, the road way swept, the ground top soiled and strawed, and it would appear as though a bridge was never there. Superior planning and coordination made this an extremely successfully project.
