LaSalle Unversity Pedestrian Bridge Garners Award

The Delaware Valley Engineers Week Council named the LaSalle University Pedestrian Bridge Project as winner of its Notable Engineering Award for 2008.

The project emanated from the University’s desire to expand its science facilities and buildings.  This expansion required a redesign of one of the existing buildings to connect it to the main east-west pedestrian “spine” of the main campus, McHale Walk.  A new crossing of busy Wister Street was needed to continue McHale Walk into the expanded campus.

Urban was responsible for the site survey, environmental compliance, utility assessment and relocation, site grading, stormwater management, and structural design of the new bridge.  Urban identified an appropriate prefabricated structure that could be erected with minimal impact to Wister Street traffic and the surrounding residential community.  Specific project elements included the necessary relocation of public utility lines to accommodate the bridge crossing, the design of supports for the bridge, and coordination with the structure fabricator.

According to Urban’s Project Manager, Bob Wright, “This was a particularly challenging project for our team in that we had several major engineering obstacles to deal with along with very tight scheduling demands.”