Working high above the River Yangzte in China, Kvaerner Cleveland Bridge heralds the start of the Chinese New Year by lifting the first 450-tonne deck unit into place on the massive Jiangyin suspension bridge.
Each day a further two of the remaining 43 sections, each 36.9 metres wide, 32 metres long and three metres deep, are lifted at rising tide from specially-made barges anchored to the centre of one of the busiest rivers in the world. All river traffic is being diverted around a 200-metre channel in the centre of the river during the lifts until the decks are at least 50 metres above water level.
The start of deck lifting in February, following the completion of almost six months of cable erection in December, represents less than half of the time taken for the equivalent operation on Kvaerner Cleveland Bridge’s last major suspension bridge, the Tsing Ma in Hong Kong.
The sections were fabricated at Kvaerner Cleveland Bridge’s Darlington factory and assembled in a yard specially set up at the start of the contract just one kilometre upstream of the bridge. From here they are transferred at high tide by barge downstream to the bridge and strand jacked into position.
Kvaerner Cleveland Bridge is mid-way through a £100 million contract to build the 1,385 metres span suspension bridge between the cities of Nanjing and Shanghai. Most of the 300 people in China working on site and in the assembly yard for Cleveland Bridge are locals.
Once complete, Jiangyin will be China’s longest suspension bridge and the fourth-longest in the world, adding to Cleveland’s reputation as a world-beating bridge builder having already constructed four of the ten longest suspension bridges in the world and seven of the globe’s 20 longest bridges - a record unrivalled in the industry.
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