Honoring Volusia County Vets with Signature Replacement Bridge

After years of diligent planning, Volusia County, Florida, is carrying out a marquee $46 million construction project—with great meaning for the local veteran community—that will improve safety for motorists, add capacity for bicycles and pedestrians and provide an important reliable evacuation route from the beaches in the event of a hurricane. The project is the replacement of the existing Orange Avenue Bridge over the Halifax River in Daytona Beach, which was plagued by its deteriorating condition, expensive maintenance costs, minimum lane and shoulder widths and inadequate channel clearance issues. The designed replacement bridge, the Tom Staed Veterans Memorial Bridge, is a high-level, 1,884-foot fixed-span concrete arch spandrel bridge extending from west of City Island Parkway to South Peninsula Drive.

Designed to be aesthetically-pleasing, the new bridge will incorporate bicycle and pedestrian accommodations, fishing piers and decorative lighting. In addition to its visual and functional appeal, the bridge was planned with Volusia County’s veterans in mind. During public meetings, a vision was defined to create an adjacent Veterans Memorial Plaza on the northwest side of the bridge, where local veteran organizations can host military ceremonies and the public can come to honor fallen vets.

Volusia County is re­ceiv­ing federal funding for the project through the Florida De­part­ment of Trans­porta­tion’s (FDOT) Local Agency Program (LAP), in which FDOT dis­perses funding while tracking com­pli­ance with federal statutes, rules and reg­u­la­tions on behalf of the Federal Highway Ad­min­is­tra­tion. Because of the project’s scope, county officials required a skilled and ex­pe­ri­enced CEI team to suc­cess­fully oversee con­struc­tion. CDM Smith is filling that role, pro­vid­ing CEI services for both the new bridge and memorial plaza. The firm is also pro­vid­ing contract com­pli­ance services to ensure Volusia County’s con­for­mance with LAP-funding re­quire­ments.

CEI plays a notable role due to numerous project com­plex­i­ties:  

• De­mo­li­tion of the Orange Avenue Bridge: The CEI team is re­spon­si­ble for ensuring that the con­trac­tor’s de­mo­li­tion plan complies with project specifications and environmental permitting and ensures that the existing bridge remains op­er­a­tional during de­mo­li­tion plan de­vel­op­ment.
  
  
• Per­mit­ting: CDM Smith is sup­port­ing the sub­mis­sion of a number of permit ap­pli­ca­tions that entail several months of lead time for approval, in­clud­ing ones from the Federal Aviation Au­thor­ity, U.S. Coast Guard, Army Corp of En­gi­neers and the St. Johns River Water Man­age­ment District, among others.
  
  
• Ge­ot­ech­ni­cal/Geometry: The major size of this bridge and its large com­po­nents require ex­ten­sive con­sid­er­a­tion and testing of ge­ot­ech­ni­cal and geo­met­ri­cal control issues.
  
  
• Trans­porta­tion and Storage of Ma­te­ri­als: Trans­port­ing precast ma­te­ri­als, such as piles, beams and arch segments, means nav­i­gat­ing through narrow streets to the project site. Ad­di­tion­ally, space is limited to store these ma­te­ri­als once they are de­liv­ered. Over­com­ing these chal­lenges ef­fi­ciently requires CDM Smith’s CEI team to ensure that each com­po­nent is thoroughly inspected upon arrival and after each time it is handled.

Bridge con­struc­tion began in June 2016 and is expected to finish by February 2019.