Reading Bridge

This year we took on the challenge of building the bridge over the River Thames at the Reading Festival.  This provided us with the unique challenge of how to design and build a structure that was fit for purpose but also alandmark that would get festival goers and the users of the river talking.

Client - Festival Republic

The Brief - Lookat the bridge that had been provided the previous year and where possible to provide a structure that fulfilled the same role, but at the same time where possible improve it.

The bridge was designed and engineered by Dragan Kusmanov, based on a concept modelled on the Sydney Harbour Bridge built out of our SPACE truss.

A successful test build took place at the beginning of May on the Glastonbury site behind the world famous Pyramid stage.

Screwfast were contracted to inspect the existing piles as well as providing a number of new piles for the crane contracted from King Lifting to land its outriggers on for the lift of the bridge

The build commenced on Monday 10^thAugust, with the first trucks arriving with the equipment to build the deck that the bridge would be constructed on for the lift, this continued into Tuesday when the bridge itself was built using a 50 tonne crane.  As we headed into Wednesday, the build of the super structure of the bridge was completed, and the decking out, scrimming aswell as the preparations for the lift on Thursday evening were carried out throughout the day and Thursday morning.

As Thursday afternoon rolled around the final preparations were made for the evening lifts, and the 250 tonne crane from King arrived to set up in preparation for the lift.  The lift of the bridge started just before 2030 in the evening, and only took 15 minutes to get across the river at whichpoint it was partially landed for a check by the design engineer on one side and his deputy other to confirm that everything was okay, after some minor adjustments on the South side to ensure that the holes were lined up the bridge was finally secured and bolted into place at 2100.