Work to beef up gusset plates on the Blatnik Bridge will require closing all but one lane -- restricting traffic to just one direction -- for as many as four weeks this summer.
A month after it was announced that the Blatnik Bridge's gusset plates needed work, the Minnesota and Wisconsin departments of transportation have awarded a $1 million no-bid contract for the job to a Burnsville, Minn., company. Ames Construction Inc. and its subcontractor, Danny's Construction Co. of Shakopee, Minn., could begin to fortify the bridge's gusset plates in earnest as soon as late next week.
Because the Blatnik is jointly owned by Minnesota and Wisconsin, the two states will evenly split the repair work's $1,064,000 price tag, according to MnDOT.
Traffic on the bridge was reduced from four lanes to two in early May to avoid overstressing the gusset plates, and preparatory work that will begin next week won't result in any additional lane closures. After that work is completed, however, a third lane, first going one direction, then the other, will be closed for about two weeks at a time, leaving just one lane open to traffic.
Traffic going the other direction will have to use the Bong Bridge.
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When transportation officials announced May 6 that 16 gusset plates in eight places on the bridge needed strengthening, they said they expected the contract to be drawn up just three days later, by May 9. In the month since then, crews have been taking measurements in preparation for the repair work and hashing out details between the design and construction elements of the job.
"The basic story is, once we got into it, the devil is in the details," local MnDOT bridge engineer Pat Huston said.
John Bray, a spokesman for the local MnDOT district, said the contract was not sent out for bids because the need to get the gusset plates strengthened quickly made it an emergency contract.
Bray said Ames and Danny's were picked because they are "big muscle" companies with the right amount of experience and expertise.
"They are the best you can find," he said.
Huston said Ames was the only company that responded when MnDOT was soliciting interest for the project.
"It's a hard job to access, so it's not up everyone's alley," Huston said.
Ames was the company that redid Piedmont Avenue in a $32 million state project between April 2003 and October 2004.
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Neither Bray nor Mike Sweeney, a spokesman for Ames, had a detailed schedule of lane closures, but both said they'd be announced before they're implemented.
Ames has 28 working days to complete the contract, Huston said, but high winds or heavy rain could add more time.
MnDOT began inspecting 25 steel truss bridges in January in response to the Aug. 1 collapse of the I-35 West bridge in Minneapolis, the failure of which was tentatively blamed on flawed gusset plates.
At the May 6 announcement, officials said the Blatnik didn't need gusset plate work because of cracks or flaws. Rather, 2 inches of decking added between 1992 and 1994 made the bridge heavier than it was calculated to be in 1961 when it was built.
