Rebecca Maloney
Americas Press Office ,Boston
The Government of Canada has awarded a contract to Arup for the engineering and coordination of the delivery of the New Bridge for the St. Lawrence River in Montreal.
This is a major win for Arup in Montreal strengthening our position in Quebec. Arup will be drawing upon their international and local expertise of major infrastructure projects to accelerate the preliminary engineering and procurement of the New Bridge for the St Lawrence River. This is a very complex project and has a challenging fast track schedule that will result in the bridge being complete and open in 2018.
We are delighted to be working again with the world award winning bridge architect Poul Ove Jensen following on from the new Forth Replacement Crossing in Edinburgh, and the Stonecutters Bridge in Hong Kong, ensuring that the bridge engineering and architecture are developed in an integrated manner.
The New Bridge will replace the existing Champlain Bridge and connect the Island of Montreal with the South Shore through complex highway junctions and smaller bridges including a new Ile des Soeurs bridge.
The Champlain Bridge is used by up to 60m vehicles per year and is one of the busiest vehicle crossings in Canada, vital to both the Quebec and Canadian economy.
The commission follows on from the preliminary engineering design that Arup has just completed for the business case for the New Bridge. The continuation of the Arup team on the project has facilitated a reduction in the overall schedule including a planned completion of the New Bridge three years earlier than originally planned.
The Arup team includes Groupe SMi, Dissing+Weitling, Provencher & Roy, and Loctrans who together will be providing bridge, highway, and traffic engineering services, along with environmental protection, urban and corridor integration, architectural quality, contributing to the PPP contract procurement documentation, and general assistance in the coordination and management of other specialist technical engineering components.