The City of Winnipeg identified that there was a need for a major rehabilitation or replacement of the existing Disraeli Bridges (Red River Bridge and the CPR Overpass). The City conducted a value for money study over the proposed design life and determined that it was in their best interest to procure the work in the form of a Design Build Finance and Maintain (DBFM) agreement. The Plenary Roads Winnipeg (PRW) Team, comprised of Plenary, PCL, and Tetra Tech, was the preferred DBFM team. The design was developed in a collaborative manner with the construction and maintenance teams to ensure that the design met the intent of the bid and long-term performance objectives. Life cycle decisions were very important during the design development. Value engineering was conducted at all stages of the project development. This provided the City with the best plan for the project with the least impact to the public in terms of traffic and cost, and to the environment. The PRW team developed a construction plan that allowed for completion of the replacement of all the roadwork and bridge structures without any shut downs during business days, maintaining operational traffic. The use of a curved bridge alignment permitted the construction of the new structures without interruption of the traffic on the existing bridges. Construction staging at the bridge ends maintained four lanes of traffic operational at all time. The new 20-m wide, 700-m long bridges featured the use of atmospheric steel girders and corrosion resistant reinforcing steel (MMFX) for the deck. Unique design features included segmental precast river piers to accelerate construction during winter months with unexpectedly high water level in the Red River. Geotechnical and environmental challenges included dealing with contaminated south riverbank soils and slope stability of the north riverbank. Construction of the new bridges began in spring of 2010. The Red River Bridge and CPR Overpass were officially opened on October 19, 2012.
