Violette Brücke – Duisburg
‘Moving a 106-year-old bridge has its challenges,’ says Arjan Bossers, project manager at Wagenborg Nedlift. ‘The bridge was at the end of its life. This means that the structure might not be reliable in all respects. It was therefore important to use the right method to safely remove the central part of the bridge.
To do this, we built two large container support structures on our SPMT trailers. The supported SPMTs were positioned on a coupled pontoon from our colleagues at Wagenborg Towage. This enabled us to navigate under the middle section of the bridge. In addition, our lifting team lifted the abutment bridges with the 500-tonne and 700-tonne mobile cranes prior to removal.’
hen came the exciting moment: removing the bridge from its abutments. ‘Fortunately, the dismantling specialists had already made the necessary preparations for this,’ continues his colleague Alwin Schuitema, supervisor and operations manager for this project.
‘Using the trailer hydraulics and a ballast operation with the pontoon, we easily lifted the bridge off the abutments and then turned it 90 degrees. The JS250 box jacking system was then used to lower the bridge 10 meters so that it was at working height on the pontoon. It was then dismantled by the demolition contractor.’
