Penobscot Narrows Bridge finalist for award

VERONA ISLAND – The Penobscot Narrows Bridge and Observatory has been named one of four finalists for the 2007 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award presented by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

“The Maine Department of Transportation is pleased to be considered for such a prestigious award,” project spokeswoman Carol Morris said Tuesday. “It is an honor to receive this kind of recognition for the department and for all the partners who participated, Cianbro, Reed & Reed and FIGG.”

Morris noted that the bridge already has won a half-dozen awards and is being considered for several others.

“We’ve received these honors despite the fact that the bridge was planned and built in such a short period of time,” she said. “That is something that couldn’t have been done without a real team effort.”

Established in 1960, the OCEA program recognizes projects for their resourcefulness in addressing planning and design challenges, impact on the environment, pioneering uses of materials and techniques, construction innovations and contribution to the well-being of people and their communities.

In selecting the bridge project as a finalist, the society noted that the 2,120-foot cable-stayed bridge was conceived and built in just 40 months and that its construction marked several firsts and record-breaking achievements.

The multistory, glass-enclosed public observatory rises 420 feet above the river, the tallest in the world and the first in the Western Hemisphere, according to an ASCE press release. The bridge was the world’s first to use cable stays protected by a pressurized inert gas system and to use a computerized system to monitor forces on the bridge. Both were made possible through the use of a revolutionary cradle system, developed by FIGG, an engineering firm with headquarters in Tallahassee, Fla. FIGG also is a finalist for the society’s Pankow Award for its cradle system design.

The bridge is also the first in the United States to use carbon fiber composite strands – providing a laboratory under actual service conditions for civil engineers around the world – while safely carrying traffic.

The bridge opened to vehicular traffic in December 2006.

Other 2007 OCEA finalists selected from a group of 18 entries include the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport Capital Development Program; the Golden Gate Bridge Seismic Retrofit Phase II South Approach Structures in San Francisco; and the Rebuilding a Nation: Rehabilitation of Economic Facilities and Services Program in Afghanistan.

Previous winners have included the relocation of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the World Trade Center towers.

This year’s award-winning project will be named during the Outstanding Projects and Leaders gala on April 25 at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.