Awards for Bow River Pedestrian Bridge
Our timber pedestrian bridge in the Town of Banff has been winning awards!
We were the design-build contractor for this new pedestrian bridge and sanitary pipe crossing. The pieces for the 113m (370ft) long bridge were fabricated in our shop in Vancouver and then shipped up to the site, pre-assembled into three spans, and erected with a 500 ton crane in 3 days.
Awards
In July, we were in London, UK for the 2014 International Footbridges Conference, at which the bridge won the top award for longspan footbridges. The awards are sponsored by the prestigious International Association of Bridge and Structural Engineers (IABSE), Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE), and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
The Associated Consulting Engineers of Canada (ACEC) gave the bridge an Award of Excellence in the Transportation Category in October.
And then last week the bridge won the Award of Excellence (Pedestrian Bridges) from the Institution of Structural Engineers in London, UK. The IStructE is the premier association for structural engineering worldwide, and its annual awards recognize excellence in structural design. This year there were over 85 projects submitted from 22 different countries.
Structural Engineering
The structural engineering for this unique bridge was complex. Due to the long and slender span, detailed finite element analysis of the footbridge dynamics was carried out to prevent problems similar to those experienced by the Millenium Bridge in London. In that instance, synchronised pedestrian footfall caused the entire bridge to sway back and forth significantly. We installed custom tuned mass dampers on the Bow River Pedestrian Bridge to dampen out the effects of people walking and jogging across the bridge. Our engineers worked with Fast + Epp on the structural engineering of the project. Many more details on our project page.
This project would not have happened without the support and vision of the Town of Banff from the very early stages.
Below is a construction timelapse of our crews erecting the bridge and a 3D model of the bridge showing the tuned mass dampers hanging under the bridge deck.