Most bridges are designed to be functional—this one was crafted to be a striking work of art that blends seamlessly with its natural surroundings. In this episode, Frank Artmont, PE, PhD a senior engineer at Modjeski and Masters, reveals the innovative design secrets behind the award-winning Hawk Falls Bridge in Pennsylvania’s scenic state park. From the strategic use of weathering steel to complex hinged arch mechanisms, discover how this project balances aesthetics, engineering excellence, and environmental harmony over a decade-long journey.
Episode Transcript
#30 – Frank Artmont
May 22nd, 2026
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Angus Stocking (00:07.128)
This is Everything is Somewhere. I’m Angus Stocking. My father, Robert Dean Stocking, was a civil engineer who spent his entire career working for the Army Corps of Engineers. He was a good engineer and he loved it. And the profession came for him at some cost. He went to school on an ROTC scholarship and ended up serving in the Korean conflict.
I don’t know much about that time in his life except that he carried a weapon with a bayonet. My brother and I learned when we went rooting around in his closet and found a rifle, bayonet, some ammo even, a clip, things like that. So a serious man and a serious career and I admired him greatly. In retrospect, I might well have become an engineer myself as he wished, but I was kind of foolish when it came to schooling and I wasted my college years and went for a long time before I happened into land surveying, which I was pretty good at and had some facility for. And I think if I had been serious from the beginning,
I might have had a career as an engineer and would have made him proud. But be that as it may, I like what I do now. And that is I’m a freelance writer of infrastructure marketing content and geospatial marketing content. I write articles and case studies and sometimes white papers. And as a consequence of this trade, I interview land surveyors and engineers all the time, and I speak with smart people all the time. And it’s a really fun thing to be doing. Today’s guest, Frank A. Artmont, PhD and professional engineer, is senior engineer of structures at Modjeski and Masters, Incorporated.
And I spoke with him in May, 2026 about his design work on the Hawk Falls Bridge replacement project. It’s a beautiful bridge, a really wonderful project. It’s an award-winning bridge. And I spoke with him and other engineers at Modjeski as I was preparing to write a feature article for my publishers at Informed Infrastructure Magazine. So what I am presenting today is a…
Angus Stocking (02:30.816)
…episode derived from an interview I performed with Frank, who’s a very good speaker, a smart guy, has a nice voice, and I think this made for very interesting listening. So I’m very grateful that I’m able to share this with you, and thank you to Frank for making the time for the interview and to Informed Infrastructure Magazine and V1 Publishers for letting me repurpose this interview. And also, if you happen to get informed infrastructure magazine, the bridge issue I think is coming out in June and will contain this article. Actually, it will be a cover article. And so without further ado, let’s hear from Frank Artmont.
Frank Artmont (03:19.246)
I started working on this project my first day at M&M about 10 years ago. At that point, I was a brand new E1 design engineer. I didn’t even have my PE yet. And how I came, I got involved with that. The first thing that I looked at was the design of the arch foundations. We call them the skewbacks and big reinforced concrete foundations. so, Tom, the first day on the job said, hey, why don’t you start looking at this? And here we are 10 years later.
After that, were, I just kind of, I finished that and then, you know, got something else to do and then got something else to do. And eventually I went on to design everything that was basically everything that was reinforced concrete on that, project. So all of the foundations, the abutments, and then also the deck slab. And then I was also involved with some of the checking of the steel components. And then I’ve been involved throughout the construction phase of the project as well.
So I’ve experienced a lot of personal growth, I would say, throughout the entire, the entirety of the project. And so for that reason, the project’s kind of special to me because it’s the first thing I worked on when I came in And here we are, you know, more than 10 years later, almost finished, but still working on it. And, you know, that’s how infrastructure goes sometimes. It moves pretty slowly.
Angus Stocking (04:37.218)
Given that intimate involvement over time, what would you have to say about the, let’s say, more novel, what’s special about this in the design and the placement and the setting? It’s a beautiful bridge. Does that spring out of design to a notable extent from your point of view?
Frank Artmont (05:00.278)
Yeah. So I think one of the things that drove the arch concept was that you look at the, all the geotechnical and foundation reports and look at all that information and the rock was really close to the ground level. And so for an arch, particularly a deck arch, you need really strong foundations to be able to take the thrust that’s pushing outwards on the arch. And so that lent itself really well. The other thing is this bridge is in the middle of a state park.
And so you don’t want to build something that doesn’t look great because people are there to enjoy the natural beauty of the park. so one of the things that I think this design does is it really, it really, think, accentuates the natural beauty of the area, especially, know, we used weathering steel, which has the, know, it starts out kind of “orangey” colored, but then over time it ends up being more of like a deep, a darker brown or almost a purplish brown. in the end, that ends up looking really great in natural environments. you know, the arch concept kind of just came out of, let’s get something, you know, down in the gorge, use those strong rock walls we kind of have to be able to have a strong foundation for the bridge.
Interestingly enough, when you’re driving across this bridge, you wouldn’t know that it’s an arch. You can’t see anything. It’s just you’re driving up and you hit this point where there’s no trees on either side. If you were going over a gorge and then you’re over it in a fraction of a second really at highway speed; could be a girder. Yeah, it could be, could have been a girder. We did look at a girder. I think we looked at a segmental concrete option. And one of the things that drove the arch was that you didn’t have to, at least during the design phase, you didn’t have to go down deep into the valley. You can keep a lot of the work up higher on the gorge walls there, the valley walls. And that would have, that would save, you know, construction time and effort not having to put piers down in the right down in the bottom of the valley.
Funnily enough, when we got to construction, the contractor had false work towers left over from a different project and ended up having to go down in the bottom of the valley anyway. But it’s just one of those things that happens on a design bid build where you can’t plan out what the contractor wants to do or is going to do. But one of the that’s one of the other reasons that an arch was chosen just to be able to keep most of the work out of that…
Frank Artmont (07:24.29)
…gorge and not have to cut access roads all the way down there. And thinking again that it’s in a state park, lot of environmental clearances needed to be done. And those are more questions for the higher level people and that whole process. But as far as innovative items, I think we used a lot of innovative materials on this bridge, particularly down where the arch meets the foundation. There’s a large pin bearing there and there’s stainless steel used there.
There is ASTM A709 grade 50 CR, which is kind of a, almost like a poor man stainless steel. It’s not quite a stainless steel, but it’s approaching a stainless steel. And we use that to kind of mitigate the need to get a coating on some areas where you really can’t paint in the future. And with weathering steel, you need, you you want those wet dry cycles to form the patina. This was an area where we weren’t sure like if water got in there, would it ever get out?
And so we went with that. That’s down at the bottom of the arch, the ends of the steel arch, right where it meets the foundation. There’s actually a large pin bearing there. It’s I think a 16 or 17 inch diameter pin. And so the arch is on two giant hinges essentially.
Angus Stocking (08:37.675)
I noticed a word hinged in the description. This is technically this is what’s…
Frank Artmont (08:41.847)
Yeah, two hinged arch, yep, that’s correct.
Angus Stocking (08:45.184)
A couple of questions present themselves to me. One is, is there use of the river and the gorge? Are people down beneath this bridge?
Frank Artmont (08:55.594)
Yes. So the bridge is named after a waterfall. It’s called Hawk Falls. And there’s a nearby one of the local roads that the Turnpike actually crosses over here. There’s a hiking area. There’s a whole parking lot there and everything that you can walk down to this area and be able to, you can actually see the arch from down there. I’m actually trying to pull up pictures just so you can get an idea of what it looks like down there.
It’s fair-
Angus Stocking (09:25.87)
It’s to say that, aesthetically at least, for the people underneath, this is a major upgrade over the previous, which was just a girder, right?
Frank Artmont (09:35.822)
No, so it was a truss bridge. was a truss bridge and it was actually designed in, I think, the early 1950s or late 1950s, sometime in the 50s, I think it was originally designed and built by Modjeski Masters as well.
Angus Stocking (09:50.914)
So beautiful in its way, but you outpaced it.
Frank Artmont (09:53.902)
Yeah, and the existing bridge is, it’s reached the end of its service life, we’ll put it that way. There’s a lot of problems with it and so that’s why the turnpike needed something to, you know, be something to be changed here. We did consider during, you know, this was before my time on the project, but I know they considered repair and repair would have cost just as much as a replacement bridge just because of the issues, you know, it’s an old 50s built up structure, riveted connections. I think there’s some limited welding, but it’s mostly riveted connections. And so you have pack rust happening everywhere. You know, just the tolls of time occurring on the bridge.
Angus Stocking (10:34.434)
What’s the life cycle for projection for this?
Frank Artmont (10:37.342)
We were hoping to achieve a hundred-year service life. That was the design. AASHTO typically is 75 years now. It’s kind of the minimum that people want to achieve, but we were aiming for a hundred year service life with this design. A lot of things we tried to design from that standpoint to need minimum maintenance. So for example, the bearings, the hinge bearings that I was talking about, those are really designed to never have to be replaced throughout the life of the bridge.
If that were to change, we did have a scheme to be able to do it. We really focused on using some more, I would say, exotic materials that aren’t typically used in bridge construction to be able to achieve that.
Angus Stocking (11:17.966)
Back up just a little bit to the rock walls. So the fact that you had rock walls to work with was something of an advantage, something that allowed you to do this pretty innovative design. And was the steepness of them helpful too or was that something you were working around?
Frank Artmont (11:37.87)
Where the arch lands, the steepness of them, I mean, it’s, you know, when I say steep, I’m not talking like, you know, sheer cliff canyon walls. Like it’s not like out west somewhere, but they’re, you know, 30 to 35 degree angle where the arch comes down. And coincidentally enough, like that’s exactly the angle that the thrust of the arch is really acting at. What that does is it allows you to not have to worry about the foundations kind of sliding. We did have some, you know, the foundations actually have a step to them.
So they’re mostly angled, I think at 45 degrees, 45 degrees off of horizontal, but then there’s some horizontal steps within the foundations as well so that when we just have the foundation sitting there, they don’t want to slide down the hill. Because when you first build them, you don’t have the force from the arch pushing down on them and into the rock. And so they’re kind of worked both of those cases in the foundations will be stable under both, you know, no load on them at all versus in the final condition when all the force from the arch is pushing on them.
Angus Stocking (12:38.658)
So that’s the initial design, but over the 10 years you’ve been on this project, what other parts of the construction and design and so forth came to the surface for you as important?
Frank Artmont (12:50.904)
So I think one of the lessons learned on this was as far as construction goes, being involved throughout the construction was super interesting. The contractor decided to use extremely large cranes, one behind each abutment to erect the bridge. The cranes, these are massive, massive cranes. I think they took upwards of 50 semi-truck deliveries just to get.
each crane on site and then they have to put it all together on site. And so that’s the size of these things. But being able to see those and go up on site visits when, you know, the arches were kind of built out from the ends and would meet in the middle, you know, that’s a complicated process, right? Because you have to make sure the arches are kind of pointing in the right direction to be able to meet in the middle. They do have some flexibility. You can bend them around, but, you know, we’re putting arch rib pieces out. We were working with the contractor’s erection engineer to make sure that, you know, things would meet in the middle in the way that we thought they would. It worked out really without a hitch in the end.
There were some cases where we thought, you know, this might not be set right or, you know, we had some worries about that, but in the end, everything came together well. The fabricator, you know, did their due diligence on making sure that everything would fit together. They, High Steel was the fabricator on this. They actually did a full lay down assembly of the arch rib. So there’s pictures of, you can kind of see the arch ribs laying down in one of their yards at the high steel facility there in Lancaster. They put them all together and made sure everything would fit together. And so, you know, when they put it up in the field, the same thing happened. Everything went together pretty much without a hitch.
Angus Stocking (14:25.166)
So I’m a land surveyor by background. I’m licensed in Wisconsin. I’m curious on the layout aspects. You’re working from both ends at once basically. You didn’t match up. Did you have survey crews out there or what was your sensing layout?
Frank Artmont (14:41.518)
Contractors had surveyors out there. They would take pre-dawn surveys so that the sunlight and the heat is not moving things around at that point. They would temperature correct to make sure that, hey, this is what we’d expect under nominal normal temperature of like 60 degrees Fahrenheit. But they had things able to be adjusted. because they’d bring an arch segment in, for the first segment, there was a segment that came out from the pin and it would be set on a shorter false work tower.
And then eventually more segments got added onto that, got put on a second set of false work towers. And those false work towers had jacks to be able to adjust things, adjust things vertically, to be able to put them where they needed to go. so throughout the, you know, every time they would put a segment up, they would, you know, put survey targets on the ends of that segment and had targets further down. And so we were able to, you know, get information from the contractors, you know, survey throughout to make sure that things were lining up and where they were expected to be.
Angus Stocking (15:47.374)
And this was optical surveying or was there?
Frank Artmont (15:50.69)
Yeah, I think they had one site where they were able to see all the survey, know, all the mirrors or whatever, you know, I’m not a surveyor, so I don’t know exactly what they’re called, but the little mirror things that they bounce off of prisms. you go. Yeah, they had one site where they were able to see all of those. They might’ve had two actually because once because there’s three arch ribs, I think some of them might’ve been blocked by one of the other arch ribs. So I don’t know a lot about that whole process. just know that they were taking data. This was all in our special provisions for erection. Like they had to keep track of this stuff just so we could be sure that, hey, when you get to the middle and you’re trying to put that crown piece in, you know, we want to make sure that everything lines up at that point.
Angus Stocking (16:36.398)
And were you getting like reports on progress? Yes.
Frank Artmont (16:39.694)
And then also helpful was in our special provisions, we asked for them to put a webcam up. And so we were able to watch them in real time as they’re, you maybe not in real time, but you know, five or 10 minutes delayed, the camera would send still shots and we’d be able to look at them online and see, yeah, they got the segment in place and they’re bolting it up now. And, and yeah, I mean, that resulted in some, you know, they have some nice time lapses at the end of, of the entire construction..
Angus Stocking (17:06.349)
To get this clear in my head, the erection depended on two, sounds like big staging areas on either side of the gorge, two giant cranes, were matched, assume, and then false work towers. So things were being craned in, set in place, supported by false work, and then the next segment would go on. And how many?
How many stages were there of that until you made the…
Frank Artmont (17:36.748)
I think there were, if I’m remembering right, there were nine arch rib segments. I don’t know if there were, think that’s correct. I don’t know if it’s a nine total or nine and… Okay, it’s actually 11, sorry. It’s 11 arch rib segments and they actually got longer, closer to the pin. And the reason for that was, you know, we thought about this during design and when you’re lifting the segments up with a crane, as the crane has to reach further, you want less load because you start exceeding the operational limits of the crane.
And so our segments got a lot shorter as we got out to the middle. And so, generally the segments would come in by truck from high steel and the cranes would lift it off the truck and bring it down and put it in place. The crane would hold it up in the air until the iron workers got enough bolts in to release it.
Angus Stocking (18:28.502)
The iron workers were out there roped up or.
Frank Artmont (18:32.618)
Yeah, they were roped up. Each of the false work towers had a nice platform there. And then they actually had this nice, the contractor came up with this nice platform that could actually be rotated and it would actually rotate to kind of be aligned with the horizontal. And they’d put that platform on the end of the segment that was most recently erected. And then when they flew the next segment in they’d be able to stand right there and put the bolts in. And then that whole, once everything was connected and bolted up, they’d actually move the platform up to the end of the segment that they just had put in and just repeat that process all the way up.
Angus Stocking (19:13.848)
Thank you so much. This is super detailed.
Frank Artmont (19:16.59)
So yeah, this is the view from actually the waterfalls. The DeHoc Falls is off the screen to the right here. Wow, it’s gorgeous. This is the view that you’d get down on Mud Run, which is the stream that goes under the bridge. And so this was near closure of the arch, but these are the platforms that I was talking about. So they sat on kind of a hinge that was up above on the arch rib and they had I think a chain that would tie back to the rib and so you’d be able to adjust the length of the chain and adjust the angle. And so you could see all the splice plates here and so they just moved this whole platform up the rib as they erected new segments.
Angus Stocking (19:55.192)
Super cool and at this point they’ve kind of removed…
Frank Artmont (19:59.054)
So you can see the false work tower and there’s a platform that goes along between the tops of the towers. And so they were able to get down, climb down on that and adjust jacks as needed and whatnot. Yeah, I’m trying to see if there’s anything. So we actually got out there and took a walk along the arch ribs right at this kind of time. And so this was before the deck is going on. So they had kind of wood that almost acted like steps and you could walk all the way up and each arch rib has an access hatch.
You see that here. You could walk all the way around and inspector can do that. We do have a full lighting and ventilation system in there. So, so that the inspectors don’t need to bring all that in with them. And it helps with, you know, confined space a little bit having a ventilation system that you just flick a switch and let it run for five minutes. I don’t, I think it’s more common on, on these larger bridges now.
I don’t think it was, but it’s something that we like to do just to be able to, you know, we’re giving them more value. doesn’t cost a whole lot to add, but you know, the inspector is going to be happy that they have it when it’s there.
Angus Stocking (21:10.754)
Well, and I would think in your goal to get a 100-year lifecycle, facilitating inspection has got to part of that…
Frank Artmont (21:19.726)
Here’s a good picture of one of the, so this is the platform I was talking about.
Angus Stocking (21:23.894)
And is that a pen there? that the?
Frank Artmont (21:26.134)
Yeah, so this was at the crown. What we did was we had a temporary erection pin. And so when the, you know, this is where the closure of the arch happened. This is after it happened. But when they, when it happened, this plate, this silver colored plate here, actually it doesn’t go all the way around the pin. It’s got like a notch, a circular notch in it. And so when the arch ribs came together and they, kind of lowered each half of the arches, you know, down like this, it met on this pin.
And then it kind of causes a, when the two halves meet on that pin, it’s like a really solid connection there. They can, you know, let off the jacks and then just start bolting things up.
Angus Stocking (22:06.69)
So it’s a little bit like an erector set when it gets set in and then once it’s set in they can solidify that connection with the…
Frank Artmont (22:17.26)
No, it’s all bolts. Everything’s all bolted together. You don’t have to deal with any field welding that way. It’s all bolted together.
Angus Stocking (22:25.998)
Frank, you, just to back up a little bit, could you comment on the prefabrication strategy? I what was built off site and why and how did you coordinate that and verify and keep index things?
Frank Artmont (22:41.838)
Yeah, so mean, everything, all the steel was built, was fabricated at a high steel shop. And so everything came on trucks and shippable pieces. And then it was, you know, it was all put together on site with all bolted connections, really. We had very little field welding to do, you know, and typically like, you know, these, some of these pictures I was just showing, that’s when the arches were, were put in and then they would actually for, you know, the floor system and the columns that hold the floor system and the deck, all of those, some of those were built in, you know, just stick built, like they bring one piece out at a time.
But some of them they actually put together, you know, in those kind of staging areas and lifted them as big pieces because of the size of the cranes they had. So some of the, you know, the columns and the floor beam that goes over the columns, were, some of those were erected as, you know, were put together as one piece on the ground and then they were lifted as one piece and put in place.
Angus Stocking (23:32.514)
far away was this was this some
Frank Artmont (23:34.67)
Yeah. So this is, this is all in, it’s called Hickory Run State Park. It’s in Northeast Pennsylvania. It’s on the Northeast extension of the turnpike. And so if you look up, yeah, if you look up Hickory Run State Park, you’d be able to find, find where it is, you know, on Google maps or whatever. The steelwork, so the, yeah, all the fabrication in the shop happened at High Steel in Lancaster. then everything was, yeah, in Lancaster. And then everything was transported by truck up to the site.
Angus Stocking (24:03.564)
And nothing was so big that you were worried about weight. was all manageable. And were you making field visits to the construction shop or was that part of your brief as far as…
Frank Artmont (24:08.183)
Right. Yep, that’s correct.
Frank Artmont (24:15.456)
Yeah, so we went to the fabrication shop while they were fabricating things a few times. And so we have some pictures of that, those visits too. The archerib box with maybe one plate wasn’t on it, it a box yet, it was more of like a U shape, saw some of that. Yeah, and just we were able to kind of watch the whole process. So I think we went to, I think I personally went to High Steel while they were fabricating two or three times, if I’m remembering correctly. And then after that we were…
I think I went to the site probably three or four times at different stages throughout. We obviously weren’t up there every day, but every couple months we would go up for a visit and just to look and see what was going on, take some pictures for things like this and for future presentations and being able to teach younger engineers like, the last time we did an arch, this is what these things look like in reality and be able to use it as a teaching tool for our younger engineers as well.
Angus Stocking (25:09.954)
Well, certainly what got my attention is I was considering different projects for this article. This is kind of a big deal for Informed Infrastructure and for me personally, because for the last couple of years, I’ve contributed the cover article for a big annual issue for them. I had some latitude as to what we do. I saw this bridge and it was just so beautiful. My first thought was, man, I hope nobody else has written this up, so I’ve got a chance at this.
And I asked Tom this and I’ll ask you, and you’ve already kind of covered this, but it’s always interesting to me that bridges, pretty big part of their brief for big bridges in particular is aesthetics because so much of them is visible. They make a statement and they’re going to be around for a long time. So you’ve already talked about this a bit, but how does Modjeski Masters approach design with a highly visible project where you’re going to be judged for how much it works. Is there some bullpen discussions about this as you go through?
Frank Artmont (26:14.941)
I mean, we do have discussions about it. A lot of times, I mean, it depends on the structure, right? For the more signature ones that are going to be very highly visible, the owner, a lot of times has an idea of what they want to see as far as aesthetics goes. know, if you’re working for the owner directly or if you’re working for a contractor, say, but the, you know, for a design build type project that the contractor has or the RFP has aesthetic requirements, you know, we generally follow those.
We want to make sure that it looks good. But I think one of the foundational things about engineering is if you design a good efficient structure, an engineer is going to look at that and say, wow, that’s beautiful. They just know because it and so with this one, because of the way the valley is set up there, having this nice shallow arch just really fit right in there, that also just looks really aesthetically pleasing just by default. And so a lot of times some of our aesthetic decisions are driven by the engineering behind it, which I think is really, really interesting when you think about it.
Angus Stocking (27:19.328)
Yeah, that’s a beautiful answer. Thank you for that. Frank, I really appreciate your time today and your expertise on this. What didn’t I ask that I should maybe have got you or what would you like brought out about this bridge in the article I’m writing?
Frank Artmont (27:35.054)
I think one thing I’d say is, you know, decision on whether or not you can call a bridge a signature bridge, to me, doesn’t depend all on the span length, right? There’s some people that say, oh, you know, that bridge is not signature because it’s not a very long span. But I think you can look at a structure like this and say, yeah, it might not be the longest span, but like look at the area it’s in, look at what it does for the local, you know, the local looks of the area, especially here where you’re in a state park, you don’t want to put something in that is big and flashy.
You want it to fit in with the environment and be, you know, just another addition to that. You know, you know, the Poconos in Northeastern Pennsylvania, really beautiful area. You don’t want to overwhelm the local area. You want to accentuate it. And I think that’s really what the structure does. It’s not the longest span, but it fits exactly where it is and it does exactly what it needs to do…
Angus Stocking (28:30.978)
Risks, safety, resilience. Risk from your point of view would be what you talked about with checking alignment as you went along. Was there other parts of the construction or design that were nail biters for you that you worried about going in?
Frank Artmont (28:49.72)
I don’t think so, just because, I mean, when I first came into this project, I was very green, I was very young, right? And so, as a very young engineer, you’re kind of just doing what your boss tells you to do, for lack of a better term, right? But as you move up and you think more about these things, I think some of these things come to mind, but I think the biggest thing for this was…
Hey, we put it together on the ground, at least if the fabricator did, is everything gonna fit back when you put it up in the field? And just, you know, for this, it went very smoothly. Sometimes it doesn’t happen. So that’s one of the risk items. Like, hey, you build all these arch ribs out and, all of a sudden they’re off by feet and you can’t fit them together. What do you do then? Like, that’s a huge issue. But once those arch ribs came together, I think everything after that is just kind of, you know, hey, finish up the project.
Hey, look, it’s carrying traffic now. It looks great. And so it really wasn’t anything else that I can think of that was like a major risk. You kind of think sometimes about the smaller details and, did I do that right? Did I, you know, did I consider this the correct way? And then you go back in and say, yeah, I think I did. You know, one of the things that comes to my mind is, you know, down at those hinges, we had some stainless steel bolts we had to specify there, which is something we don’t do often. What kind of bolts do we actually need there?
It’s not the typical ones we use. We do our best to match, you know, material. And then we actually later on design process said, Hey, we think this material will work a little better. So we’re going to specify that instead. That turned out to be the right decision. It’s coming up against some of those things that I think, you know, here at Modjeski Masters, we excel well with is, Hey, we have never done this before. What is the best way to do it? I think we do that very well. There’s very few things that we do over and over again. Most, most things we’re doing or the first time or we did it, but it was a while ago, how can we improve it? And I think that’s something we excel here. And I think that’s something this bridge excels at is, plenty of people have designed arches, but this is a really unique one that we put our personal flair on.
Angus Stocking (30:56.706)
What was the design strategy or the contracting strategy here?
Frank Artmont (31:01.176)
So this was a design bid build. so we just, we were hired directly by the PTC to develop the design. We started with a feasibility study and figuring out, is it better to, you know, repair the existing bridge or replace. And then we took it all the way through final design. And then I there were two or three, I think there were three contracting teams that bid on it. The Trumbull (team) out of Pittsburgh was the one who won the project. And we’ve had a good relationship working with them throughout the construction phase.
Angus Stocking (31:30.178)
And I guess lastly for me, was there a construction milestone that you made sure to be in the field for, like maybe the final connection of the arches or was there something special out there that you wanted to see?
Frank Artmont (31:42.734)
I think there were kind of two that come to mind. The one was the one you just mentioned, being there when, the arches are closed and they’re self-supporting and, you know, they’re not on the false work towers anymore. That was the big one, right? But because of my personal involvement, having designed the arch foundations, I wanted to be there after they were cast, but before they were really buried. Because in the final condition, don’t see, you see, you know, 10 % of the whole foundation. You don’t see 90 % of it.
And I wanted to be there to say, to be able to see, wow, this is a huge thing, you know, stand next to it. So I have a picture somewhere of me standing next to one of these things and yeah, it’s enormous. But now it’s just buried. Now you’re not going to see most of that. But I wanted to be there for that and got the opportunity to as well.
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Angus: Thanks for listening to this 30th episode of Everything is Somewhere. I hope that you liked it as well.
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