Sultan Haji Omar Ali Saifuddien Bridge (Temburong Bridge): span by span deck erection

The Temburong Bridge is a 27km long crossing linking the two parts of Brunei across Brunei Bay. It includes 13km of marine viaduct, split into 2 sections by a cable stayed bridge. Construction of its twin road decks in the shortest possible time called for a new type of lifting gantry that could lift and place both decks simultaneously. Each pair of 50m full-span precast concrete box girders was delivered by barge to both sides of the piers, lifted, tracked sideways and lowered on to their bearings, all by the gantry, which then launched itself to the next span. This cycle was repeated 267 times. The gantry had an overall length of 130m, a ‘wingspan’ of 59m and could lift the 870 tonne deck sections 26m from its centreline. Having completed the first 165 spans the gantry was relocated to the other side of the cable stayed spans in one piece by floating crane. This paper describes the engineering challenges posed by this unique method, and their solution. One such challenge was catering for the dynamic out-of-balance loading on the gantry's cantilever ‘wings’ generated when lifting simultaneously off independent barges.