Water jets will cut formwork out of four pier haunches on Germany’s most expensive bypass bridge

The haunches are the curved concrete joints that tie the steel superstructure to piers up to 70 meters tall. They were cast after the steel deck had been lowered onto the piers. At a site visit, Holger Behrmann, who runs DEGES operations in Saxony, said pieces of the formwork ended up in the pour, leaving voids and the leftover material inside, dpa reported. Around Prague reported that the material is wood. Behrmann said the bridge’s stability is not affected. Where the voids open to the outside, though, air and moisture could reach the reinforcing steel.

Metrostav, which is building the bridge in a joint venture with BeMo Tunnelling, told Around Prague the contractors themselves found poorly compacted concrete where the reinforcement is extremely dense. Under the repair plan, crews will strip concrete from the affected zones by hydrodemolition, using water at high pressure, and then pump new concrete into the cavities. The method has been trial-tested, but the federal transport ministry and the state of Saxony still have to approve it. Work could start this year but must stop over winter because fresh concrete cannot be allowed to freeze. DEGES will set an opening date after the winter.

DEGES says the joint venture accepts the fault and will pay for the repair, so the €288.4 million budget for the 3.8-kilometer bypass should hold. The 1999 preliminary plan put the road at about €36 million, and the 2017 estimate was €96.6 million. The bridge alone is now put at about €180 million against roughly €72 million first planned, the Ostdeutsche Allgemeine reported. The bypass was originally due to open in 2022.