 QE II Bridge, England
|
The Queen Elizabeth II Bridge is a vital link in the M25 London Orbital Motorway spanning the River Thames between Dartford and Thurrock. Its opening in 1991 was the culmination of a design and construct contract undertaken by Cleveland Bridge and Cementation construction – building what was then one of the world’s longest cable-stayed spans. In 1986, the British Government invited promoters to submit private sector bids for a third crossing at Dartford to double the capacity there for the new M25 motorway. The Trafalgar House bid, based on a cable-stayed bridge, succeeded against competitors with tunnel schemes and so Cleveland Bridge undertook the construction of another bridge across the Thames. The steel bridge carries four lanes of traffic in one direction over a main span of 450m with 181m backspans: approach viaducts of 20 and 21 composite spans each make up an overall length of 2872 metres. Cleveland Bridge designed the complete superstructure, employing Dr. Helmut Homberg, the distinguished German engineer, for the cable-stayed spans: Cleveland Bridge engineers designed the approach viaducts. Their consortium partners designed the substructures and ship protection works. In this way the designers and constructors could work closely together to achieve a good economic buildable design, tuned to the construction methods. |
In construction the company was responsible for:
- All construction engineering for the superstructure, including the stage by stage analysis for cable erection
- Fabrication of over 19,000t of structural steelwork in the pylons, bridge spans and viaducts
- Erection of the four 84m high pylons on 53m high concrete piers, using a floating crane
- Sequential deck erection of the multi-stayed steel deck with 750,000 bolts and 112 separate stays with diameters up to 164mm
- Erection of steelwork for the viaducts
As main contractor in the consortium, Cleveland Bridge demonstrated how a competitive solution could be implemented by the design and construct approach for a busy vital crossing. It extended its experience in cable-stayed construction marked by the steel spans of the Wye (235m), West Gate (336m) and Kessock (240m) bridges.