Besix subsidiary Six Construct handed over the Infinity Bridge to its client, the Dubai Road & Transport Authority (RTA). The 12-lane, 295m-long bridge crosses 15.5m above Dubai Creek.
Six Construct project manager Nicolas Bruyninckx said: “We are extremely proud to have delivered the Infinity Bridge to the RTA, which I thank for its confidence. We are also very proud to have completed it on time despite the Covid-19 pandemic, for which I would like to congratulate all our teams and our partners and suppliers, as this required them to rethink the organisation of the work, always keeping construction excellence, our client's interest and safety as top priorities. The Infinity Bridge is a magnificent infrastructure that contributes to further embellishing the city of Dubai.”
The construction of the bridge deck was completed in just eight months, with the Covid-19 pandemic in the background. The team succeeded in improving the cycle to cast the bridge segments from 10 to less than six days on average.
Mammoet teamed up with Aertssen Machinery Services to install key elements of the bridge. Forty steel segments of the infinity arch, weighing up to 130t, needed to be installed over the creek and above the bridge deck, which could not support a suitably sized crane. The team used two Demag lattice boom crawler cranes to install the segments. Aertssen positioned its CC 3800 at the northern side of the creek and Mammoet set up its CC 8800-1 on the southern bank.
Mid-bridge segments required tandem lifts by the two cranes positioned on opposite banks of the creek and with a working radius of 140m. The tandem lifts were performed with the CC 8800-1 handling the majority of the weight.
Somnath Bhattacharjee, crane operations manager for Mammoet’s UAE branch, said: “Each lift required an extraordinary level of precision as the tolerances for joining the segments were a matter of millimetres. But when you have the right machines and a great team, all goes smoothly.”
