The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) announced today that joint venture Kiewit-General-Manson submitted the apparent best combination of bid price and technical proposal for replacing the aging SR 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington. GeoEngineers is part of the Kiewit team and will provide geotechnical, seismic and hydrogeological services on this signature project.
Construction is scheduled to start in 2012, and WSDOT’s goal is to open the new bridge to traffic as soon as December 2014. The design-build contract includes:
- Building a six-lane floating bridge with wider, safer shoulders, a transit/HOV lane in each direction and a bicycle/pedestrian path.
- Towing 33 concrete pontoons from a fabrication site on the Washington coast and assembling the floating bridge on Lake Washington.
- Building 44 supplemental concrete pontoons and 58 anchors.
- Building an east approach connection to a six-lane highway currently under construction and building a new maintenance facility and dock on the east shore of Lake Washington.
Construction of the new SR 520 floating bridge is the first stage of the I-5 to Medina: Bridge Replacement and HOV Project, one of the largest and most-complex transportation projects in Washington state history.
