Strategic Design Decisions Enable Fern Hollow Bridge’s Accelerated Timeline

Designing and constructing a new bridge in less than a year is almost unheard of. But when a Pittsburgh bridge unexpectedly collapsed on Jan. 28, 2022, the team assembled to create the new Fern Hollow bridge knew that they needed to move quickly to restore this important community connection.

HDR senior project managers Jason Fuller and Kevin O’Connor wrote about the project for Aspire magazine. Fuller led HDR’s work on the project, and O’Connor led the structural design of the bridge. The two shared a look at the month-by-month process, from early design decisions to the scheduling strategy that delivered detailed designs in time to open a new bridge in a single construction season.

“Working alongside PennDOT, FHWA and Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, the design-build team streamlined project delivery in several ways to meet the aggressive construction timeline,” the two wrote. “The partners worked as a team to transform a tragic incident into a source of community pride.”

Less than 11 months after the collapse, a new four-lane, 460-foot bridge opened to traffic in December 2022. Read the whole article, "From Collapse to Commute," in the Summer 2023 issue of Aspire, published by the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute.