For the 2019 Excellence in Concrete Construction awards from the American Concrete Institute I was a judge in the infrastructure category. I was very glad to see that my favorite project ended up winning. The Brattleboro Bridge in Vermont was designed by Figg and built by PCL Civil Constructors with large concrete piers on each river bank and a concrete deck built with a balanced cantilever approach. At 1036 feet long and 100 feet above the West River, it is Vermont's largest bridge. As the photos show, this so-called "bridge to nature" was clad with stone and looks like it grew straight out of the forest.
Ironically for FIGG, the bridge won the ACI award one day before the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released its final report on the Florida International University pedestrian bridge collapse where FIGG took much of the blame. According to USA Today, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said "FIGG Bridge Engineers severely underestimated the demand on the bridge, significantly overestimated the bridge’s capacity ... among other calculation errors. But another structure failed in this accident, the structure of public safety oversight." FIGG disputed this in a statement that, ""The accident was the result of a complex series of events and failings by parties at multiple stages of the project."
Good times, bad times.
