[Timelapse] Atlanta’s I-85 Bridge Rebuild Completed a Month Ahead of Schedule

via Youtube

via Youtube

Traffic in Atlanta sucks, there’s really no other way to say it.  So imagine the tough position commuters and city officials were put in when a bridge of a major highway on the north side of the city caught fire on March 20, 2017 and was damaged beyond repair.  243,000 motorists were forced to find alternate routes to work for the estimated 3 months that it was going to take to rebuild it.  Now, imagine how thrilled they were when the highway opened back up one month ahead of schedule.

OxBlue, a timelapse construction camera company, made live footage of the bridge rebuild available for the world to watch on Youtube after work began and, as of Friday night (5/12/17), the live feed shows vehicles traveling on the highway once again.

So, how in the world did this bridge finish an entire month ahead of schedule?  Incentives and a solid budget.  It’s really amazing what money can accomplish.

CW Matthews Contracting Co, Inc., the company in charge of the highway replacement, was offered a $3 million bonus if the roads were reopened before Monday, May 15, in time to beat Memorial Day traffic, according to NBC 11Alive.  Crews were pulled from other nearby projects and 7 bridge crews worked during the day, as well as another 6 at night, totaling around 54,000 man hours.

13 million pounds of debris had to first be removed from the site, before any of the work began.  Over 505,000 pounds of steel rebar and 2,103 cubic yards of concrete were used on the support structure. The contractors also used a more expensive, hi-early concrete, which reach compressive strength in just 3 days. 

Since OxBlue had weeks of footage of the bridge rebuild already, they decided to condense the weeks of footage down to a 90 second timelapse to show how it all happened. You can also watch a short interview with Dan Garcia, the President of CW Matthews, below the timelapse video. 

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