each one weighs roughly one tonne per metre. The piles are
driven in two sections that are joined together with a customdesigned
mechanical splice.
The bridge, located just north of Cartagena, forms part of
a highway connecting the city to Barranquilla, Colombia. The
Colombian government contracted the Italian firm Rizzani
de Eccher to build the bridge, and a subsidiary company
called DEAL contacted Bermingham in 2015 to ask for help
with the piling portion of the beam launcher project.
DEAL had already partnered with Bermingham in the
past. The two companies worked together to supply two
similar beam launchers for the construction of a bridge in
Washington, N.C., back in 2007.
DEAL proposed using the same technology for the
Cartagena bridge, whose builders shared similar environmental
challenges faced by those in North Carolina.
Benefits of top-down construction
Top-down construction significantly reduces the footprint
left by bridge building by eliminating the need for heavy
equipment and supporting structures on the ground.
It’s particularly useful in very shallow areas when building
from a barge is extremely difficult, if not impossible,
and it can also reduce potential damage to environmentally
sensitive marshlands. Both were key considerations
in Cartagena, where the bridge builders are traversing
a shallow, mangrove-filled lagoon located along the
Colombian coast.
Gabaldo says building the bridge by alternate means,
such as creating artificial islands or constructing temporary
structures for pile driving, would have had been harmful
environmentally.
Estimating the total cost of the Cartagena bridge project
at around $100 million, Gabaldo maintains building the
bridge by traditional means would have been hugely expensive
as well.
“There are significant investments in order to build
bridges in these kinds of environments,” he said. “If you can’t
do it either by land or by water, you have to think of a Plan B.”
In addition to supplying the two lead systems for the beam
launchers in Cartagena, Bermingham also refurbished three
Berminghammer B-6505HD diesel impact hammers used in
the Washington bridge project. Two of them are currently
being used on site in Colombia and the third is there on
standby in case it’s needed.
According to Gabaldo, Bermingham had a tight delivery
timeline for the project.
“I think we had four months from the time the papers
were signed to the time the containers with our equipment
left our yard in March 2016,” he said.
Gabaldo says Bermingham personnel completed a thorough
assessment of their equipment once it arrived in Colombia.
“When you’re on site, there’s always some tweaking
because you want to correlate your calculations with the real
world,” he said. “We did all the testing and we were spot-on in
all the calculations.”
PROJECT SPOTLIGHT
60 Q2 2017 www.pilingcanada.ca
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