Greely Bridge Emergency Repairs

Owner: BC Ministry of Transportation and Transit
Schedule: Planned: 8 days Actual: 5 days

The Greely Bridge carries local resident, railway, and logging traffic on Greely Road over the Illecillewaet River. A routine bridge inspection identified a crushed timber floorbeam, deteriorated pile caps, and rotten piles, resulting in an immediate load restriction of 5 tonnes.

Access Bridgeworks was engaged to complete the emergency repairs required to restore the bridge to legal loading. Within five days of receiving a purchase order, Access Bridgeworks had procured all necessary materials and had a crew onsite undertaking repairs. Using four 50-ton jacks and four 15-ton jacks, the crew lifted the main span to replace two 16 ft long 12x12 timber caps. Following replacement of the caps, additional jacking operations were completed to replace a timber floorbeam, three piles, an abutment pile cap, and to restore the vertical alignment of the structure.

Once the timber replacements were complete, the crew fabricated and installed steel reinforcement brackets at the pier connections to improve load transfer and strengthen the structure.

Despite the emergency nature of the work and the extensive jacking operations required, the repairs were completed in just five days, allowing the load restriction to be removed three days ahead of schedule.