At the end of the second day of the three-day Demerara Harbour Bridge (DHB) span replacement project, the Minister of Public Works, Juan Edghill, has insisted that work will not go beyond midnight tonight as scheduled.
The bridge closed from 23.58 hours on Monday, July 24, and is expected to reopen at midnight today.
Speaking to the media on day two of the closure, Edghill was adamant that the bridge works will not extend beyond Thursday midnight, as promised.
“We are not going to go beyond the time requested. We said we will be finished by Thursday night at midnight and the chances are that we will open before midnight on Thursday. We are not going beyond midnight Thursday”, he said.
As to the exact timing, the minister said he preferred not to speculate since things can happen and only the workers can determine how much time is needed.
“I don’t want to venture into the realms of speculation, I’ll leave that up to the technical people. Work is ongoing and they had to make some adjustments that could be done very swiftly or it could take a little while because we want to make sure everything is perfect but the important thing is that we are on schedule and in some instances, we are ahead of schedule”
He pointed out that when the bridge is set to open the public will be notified, which can happen before midnight today.
With questions raised about contingency plans if work goes beyond Thursday, Edghill brushed aside the idea.
“The questions people have been calling and asking ‘do you have a contingency plan’ because it looks like the bad takes precedence over the good news and I think people in Guyana should appreciate the serious work and effort that have been put in by our local people”, he said.
Industrial Fabrications (INFAB) was expected to start work on Span 9 since last year, and the proposed period was seven days, but both the DHB and the Ministry of Public Works rejected the plan.
The original span which had been installed some 44 years ago was 254 feet long, but in 2016 there were some issues and some modifications were made that reduced the actual length of the span to 180 feet. This meant that after the adjustment only smaller vessels could have passed through during retraction.
Moving forward to 2021, works were done on Spans 9 and 10 and in 2022. Span 9 suffered a fracture and continued to fracture. With the span fractured, a temporary pontoon was installed to reduce the weight underneath the span.
It was also explained that some parts of the span’s panels are also fractured and even if they were re-welded, after a short while it would be back to square one.
Most of the damage occurred on the left side of the bridge, going east to west. And according to the authorities, this clearly is due to the movement of heavily-laden trucks. Works will also be done to the high span to take advantage of the bridge closure.
It is expected that by the end of day two, the span would be in place and today will be used for inspection and testing.
Edghill explained further. “We are standing on span nine. Yesterday at 8 o’clock when we did that briefing, we could not get on Span 9, even though it was in place we had to stand off. The men worked here overnight and they were putting in the plates. We were also able to put in the cable wheel, the big wheel to move the hydrolytic cabin and the cabinet, and we were able to put back the two towers. All the hydraulic and electrical connections are already in place. We are now awaiting the two arms that will lift the two racks when the bridge retracts. Once that is done, we will be able to start testing.”
