West River Bridge Wins Civil Engineering Award

The I-95 West River Bridge, a major construction initiative that will replace one of Connecticut’s busiest highway bridges and reconfigure an adjacent interchange, has received a prestigious statewide civil engineering award for geotechnical excellence.

The project was the recipient of the Achievement in Civil Engineering (ACE) Award in the geotechnical category from the Connecticut Society of Civil Engineers. STV, in association with Amman & Whitney, is providing construction engineering and inspection services. Parsons Brinckerhoff (engineering design) and The Middlesex Corporation (contractor), were also a part of this winning project team.

The $135 million, five-year project, which is being overseen by the Connecticut Department of Transportation (CTDOT), will replace the 1,138-foot bridge between New Haven and West Haven with a wider span to provide shoulder areas along with an acceleration lane on the southbound side. It will also replace a pair of cloverleaf interchanges with a single diamond interchange to increase capacity and improve safety and efficiency through the heavily traveled corridor.

“It’s gratifying for everyone on our team to receive this recognition,” said STV field engineer Michael Oliver, P.E., M.ASCE. “This has been a very complex and challenging project, which more than 130,000 vehicles travel through every day. The soil conditions for placing the new bridge pilings and abutments were not ideal and required innovative methods to stabilize the riverbed and the surrounding marshlands.”

Organic silt over sand provided challenging soil conditions for the new bridge. The soil stabilization component during the first phase of construction was separated into four stages to accommodate traffic through the area. At the same time, the team was able to reduce the amount of excess soil that had to be removed from the site by placing it on the highway’s embankments, saving CTDOT an estimated $1.5 million in disposal costs while benefitting possible future widening projects.

For more information, contact:

Jill Bonamusa 
(212) 614-3354
jill.bonamusa@stvinc.com

Jonathan Lucas
(212) 614-3391
jonathan.lucas@stvinc.com