Tay Road Bridge - Underdeck Access
Project Details
- Location:Fife, UK
Project Background
During the summer months of 2023/24, our customer VolkerLaser was working with the Tay Road Bridge Joint Board to carry out restoration works to Tay Road Bridge, a key transport link connecting Fife to Dundee.
Since its construction in 1966, the bridge has faced decades of wear and tear, and exposure to the harsh Scottish elements, and the time had come for the road deck to receive a well-earned refurbishment.
In addition to the repair and resurfacing of the road deck, there were multiple areas of the underdeck soffit requiring repairs to the concrete. HAKI Access Solutions were awarded the contract to supply the underdeck access required to complete these repairs.
Client Initial Specified Work Scope
Our customer’s design brief required us to provide underdeck access to approximately 20 locations on the bridge for repairs throughout the two-year project lifecycle.
As fixing into the bridge was not permitted and the underdeck gantry rails could not be used as suspension points, a cantilever drop scaffold solution would be required. This was secured to the road deck using concrete kentledge blocks to ensure the necessary stability as fixings into the road deck were to be avoided.
An additional constraint would be that our temporary works had to be designed to occupy only one of the two lanes at any given time, keeping the other lane open for construction traffic to pass the worksites freely.
Our Solution
We designed a cantilever dropped scaffold using HAKI Universal System Scaffold and HAKI 750 Aluminium beams to project out over the parapet. The dimensions of the scaffold were chosen to provide a suitable sized working area to complete all the required repairs and all required scaffolding on the road deck was within a single lane to allow general site access.
Access to the scaffold was directly from the road deck and above the kentledge from a fully handrailed decked lift. This allowed simple unrestricted access to all personnel to facilitate detailed inspections, multiple repair visits, final sign off inspections and engineering reports.
The use of HAKI Universal System Scaffold improved the build speed allowing more repairs to be captured within the crucial summer weather window.
Safety & Commercial Benefits
The use of HAKI Universal System Scaffold as the basis for the design resulted in a 60% labour duration saving compared to erecting a comparable temporary structure from traditional tube and fitting scaffold.
This resulted in a reduced programme of works with the strike and re-erect of each scaffold being completed in a single shift thus giving our customers operatives minimal downtime following the completion of one repair area.
All repairs were completed from within a secure handrailed platform to allow the best possible repairs. All works were fully sheeted in to ensure full environmental containment was provided to protect both the river below and adjacent users of the footpath.