The National Steel Bridge Alliance or NSBA recently honored the Texas Department of Transportation with its inaugural “Owner of the Year” award for TxDOT’s “trailblazing efforts” in bridge design and construction.
[Above: NSBA’s Jeff Carlson at left with TxDOT’s Jamie Farris at right. Photo by TxDOT]
NSBA said the award is in recognition for its years of research and decades spent developing best practices for achieving economical and easily constructed steel bridges. Some of the things highlighted by NSBA that TxDOT has done to develop best practices for steel bridges include:
- Investing in steel bridge research;
- Developing a joint owner-industry forum called the Texas Steel Quality Council;
- Publishing a document, Preferred Practices for Steel Bridge Design, Fabrication, and Erection, that provides guidance to help designers working on TxDOT projects to achieve optimal quality and value in steel bridges;
- Developing steel bridge standards for steel rolled beams and steel plate girder bridges;
- Developing an FHWA approved steel twin tub analysis methodology for redundancy.
Many of those practices were implemented in the Brazos River Bridge project, which was included in a larger project on SH 105 across the Navasota and Brazos rivers and Coles Creek in Grimes, Brazos, and Washington counties.
The Brazos River Bridge “is a testament” to TxDOT’s culture of innovation and continuous improvement, noted Jamie Farris, director of TxDOT’s Bridge Division, in a statement.
By integrating what’s known as lean-on bracing principles, TxDOT engineers were able to put research into practice, providing many long-term benefits, she said.
[Editor’s note: TxDOT is preparing to honor Leah Moncure – the first woman engineer in Texas, who went on to work for the then Texas Highway Department (now TxDOT) for 32 years – with a new historical marker in Bastrop County.]
“This was a complex project for many reasons,” stressed Farris.
“One of the first issues we faced was finding a new location for the replacement bridge,” she said. “Because of the Brazos River’s slope-failure region, the new bridge couldn’t be placed adjacent to the existing structure. [That’s why] this project is a testament to TxDOT’s culture of innovation and continuous improvement. It also highlights our ability to adapt in order to meet the structural needs of any project.”
“TxDOT isn’t just implementing best practices for designing and building steel bridges — it is defining how (a builder) can maximize the potential of steel,” said Jeff Carlson, NSBA senior director for market development. “Recent projects like the remarkably economical Brazos River Bridge demonstrate how TxDOT’s longstanding investment in steel bridge research is paying dividends for Texans, today and tomorrow.”
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