Review of the Florida University Pedestrian Bridge Accident

The construction of FIU Pedestrian Bridge commenced in the spring season of 2017 and was anticipated to be completed by 2019. The pedestrian bridge was put up on March 10, 2018. This is when the primary span was elevated from makeshift supports, as well as rotated ninety degrees over an eight-lane pathway. The bridge collapsed on March 15, 2018, killing six people, one construction worker and other five people whose vehicle was below the bridge when the devastating accident occurred. Utilizing an innovative strategy to the construction of the pedestrian bridge, the primary span, that weighs nine hundred and fifty tons, was constructed adjacent to Southwest Eighth Street. Videos of the crumbled bridge revealed that the concrete, wreck section of the bridge began to collapse on the same edge of the bridge where the shaft redesign took place, two days after a construction engineer working on the project disclosed the existence of cracks in a similar position.

The section that collapsed had been positioned atop the tower's footing, as well as the taller pylon segment was to be fixed later. NTSB official reported that workers were employing post-stress force on the span on the day the tragedy occurred, however, are not certain on whether that action triggered the bridge to collapse. Local government made a statement that workers carried out a "stress check" the day of the bridge collapsed (Gan et al. The investigation into the collapse of the FIU Pedestrian Bridge reveals that some errors were made in the design involving the northernmost nodal of the one hundred and seventy four-foot-long bridge. The cracking reported within the weeks prior the fall out was "compatible with the diagnosed errors," as the report proclaimed (Khan 45). Pictures of those cracks formally launched by the NTSB revealed that they developed substantially larger after the prefabricated span was repositioned from a casting yard and set into the area over a busy toll road, as well as a canal.

The investigation into the main cause of the accident continues to assess the design, analysis, as well as construction strategies in addition to the measures taken as soon as the cracking was discovered. The NTSB report also claimed that concrete, as well as steel samples from the span, met the minimum necessities described in the venture's plans. Two days prior the disintegration of the bridge, an engineer working with the design agency, FIGG Bridge organization, send a voicemail to FDT officials to document that cracking were discovered at one edge of the concrete bridge; however, the agency did not regard it as a safety concern (Pearson-Kirk 29). The partly built pedestrian bridge was being constructed through a layout-build joint enterprise known as MCM-FIGG, along with entrepreneur MCM construction, as well as FIGG Engineers, each primarily located in Florida (Taricska 60).

Following the layout strategy, five days prior to the crumble construction worker "de-tensioned the footbridge diagonal members on the north, as well as the south edge of the bridge," the account declared. At the time of the tragedy, the construction developer was occupied "re-tensioning the number eleven diagonal member linking the canopy, as well as the deck at the north edge of the footbridge," as stated by the report. The task team's know-how of pre-collapse cracking within the bridge span was initially documented on March 16, while FDOT delivered the transcript of a voice mail it had obtained from the bridge venture's main engineer prior to the disintegration of the pedestrian bridge. One of the initial legal action filed in place of Florida International University student Emily, one whose vehicle was crushed by the collapsed bridge proposed that post-tensioning prompted the failure that led to the collapse of the footbridge (Taricska 60).

 Update of Florida crash reduction factors and countermeasures to improve the development of district safety improvement projects. No. FDOT 99700-3596-119. Florida Department of Transportation, 2005: 23- 78. Khan, Mohiuddin Ali.