New Crossings

Marine Environment

Terrestrial Environment

Constraints

Options

Alignments

Design Considerations

Overview/Early History

Original Plans

Recent History

1995 – Hurricane Felix

2003 – Hurricane Fabian

Public Meeting Presentations

Bridges in Other Countries

Bridges in Bermuda

Existing Causeway

Canadian engineer exploring Causeway possibilities

By Stuart Roberts

A bridge engineer has been busy canvassing environmental groups and local stakeholders for the best way to transport cars, boats and people across Castle Harbour.

“Associated Engineering is a Canadian Engineering firm who has been involved with projects in Bermuda going back to the early 1970’s,” a Works and Engineering spokeswoman said.

Last week, Works and Engineering Minister Ashifield DeVent announced that Associated Engineering (AE) and OBM International had been jointly awarded the contract to design a new causeway that would stand up to extreme weather.

“As an added note, they have also taken on board Bermudian graduate engineers for a one year employment term which fulfils the Canadian engineering experience criteria for registration,” she said. “The Ministry can only speak highly of this firm.”

AE’s vice president of transportation, John Fussell said he had already met with 30 stakeholders in the Causeway and plan to meet with 15 more.
“They are all people whose day to day lives are affected by the existing structure,” Mr. Fussell said.

But so far the preferred model of Causeway was still up in the air.
He said he had met with the Deputy Mayor of the Corporation of St. George’s, the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, the Bermuda Land Development Company and the Bermuda National Trust.

“We go to environmental groups to draw out all of their hopes and challenges,” he said, adding that he was unable to say whether two bridges across Castle Harbour was an option. We are in the early stages yet,” he said.

“My assignment at this time is to form a functional planning study and come up with a community consensus.”

This week, Mr. Fussell will present his findings to Works & Engineering Minister Ashfield DeVent.

Similar to the new hospital meetings held this summer, AE will come up with three viable alternatives to the Causeway, and present them to the public in September.

Most recently, AE was involved with the Corporation of Hamilton’s $7.5 million waste-water pumping station built on Front Street which was completed in 2004.

In October 2000, AE’s Miles Brook and his wife Gwen departed from Vancouver International Airport to begin a one-year assignment in Bermuda as resident engineer for the construction of the wastewater treatment plant.

“Bermuda truly is a magnificent location and I feel grateful for receiving the opportunity to come here to see the fruits of the labour of all those good people back in the office translated into a concrete form over the course of my one year stay,” Mr. Brook said on the AE web-site.

After Hurricane Fabian in September 2003, AE offered assistance “to conduct a preliminary damage assessment of the airport and identify measures to protect the airport facilities from future hurricane damage,” it said.

“Associated Engineering is continuing to work with the Department of Airport Operations to assist with processing insurance claims and developing a post-hurricane recovery plan.”