News

As the main bridge repair and resurfacing works are nearing completion, our attention now switches to the approach and exit ramps. The ramps will be resurfaced and new movement joints installed with a series of diversions and ramp closures being required from 5 August. The works will be undertaken from 7pm to 5am, with local diversions being used between 7pm and twenty past midnight, being followed by a full bridge closure between twenty past midnight and 5am. These restrictions are required for the safety of our users and our staff and contractors. Please note that the diversions will be local and involve re-routing of traffic around the Waterfront and East Marketgait  as we alternately close the west (Perth) ramp and east (Aberdeen) ramp. For periods, the road surface will be temporary and reduced speed limits will be in place. For your safety and the safety of our staff and contractors, please adhere to all signs and take extra care. These works are being carried out during the evenings and nights in an effort to reduce the impact on all bridge and city centre traffic. The walkway will remain open and blue light emergency access will be maintained. We apologise for the disruption that these essential works will cause.

Please be aware that the works will involve noise at times as we remove existing joints and surfacing. We apologise to all our local residents for the disruption that this might cause and confirm that our contractors have pledged to keep noise to a minimum.

Bridge Restrictions and Closures as per the following:

Local Diversions will be in place from 7pm to twenty past midnight (1900 to 0020). Bridge remains open to all traffic during this period.

Bridge will be FULLY CLOSED at twenty past midnight to 5am (0020 to 0500), after which it will reopen.  

• Start work at 7pm on Monday 5 August and work to 5am on Tuesday 6 August

• Start at 7pm on Monday 12 August and work to 5am on Tuesday 13 August
• Start at 7pm on Tuesday 13 August and work to 5am on Wednesday 14 August
• Start at 7pm on Wednesday 14 August and work to 5am on Thursday 15 August
• Start at 7pm on Thursday 15 August and work to 5am on Friday 16 August

• Start at 7pm on Monday 19 August and work to 5am on Tuesday 20 August
• Start at 7pm on Tuesday 20 August and work to 5am on Wednesday 21 August
• Start at 7pm on Wednesday 21 August and work to 5am on Thursday 22 August
• Start at 7pm on Thursday 22 August and work to 5am on Friday 23 August

• Start at 7pm on Wednesday 28 August and work to 5am on Thursday 29 August
• Start at 7pm on Thursday 29 August and work to 5am on Friday 30 August

• Start at 7pm on Monday 2 September and work to 5am on Tuesday 3 September
• Start at 7pm on Tuesday 3 September and work to 5am on Wednesday 4 September

The project is still going well and is on programme for completion by the end of September. All concrete repairs are now complete, along with the four coats of bridge deck waterproofing. The HB and high containment kerbs have also been installed, with final grouting to secure them still ongoing. The asphalt running surface installation commenced on 10 July and will be finished in the coming days. The asphalt is laid over the the bridge carriageway in a continuous "pour" and must only be stopped at the movement joints. The asphalt that is laid over the joint locations is cut out with a still saw and then removed by a pneumatic hammer. This allows the joint team to insert the new joints, which are fixed in place with resin. Around 18 joints have been installed to date, with 46 joints required in total. The ramps resurfacing and joint installation will start on or around the 5th August, and an update on how this will affect drivers will be provided in the next few days. 

The works are still on programme to be completed by the end of September. Waterproofing of the deck (60,500 square metres, equivalent to "painting" the Hampden Park football pitch over eight times) has now been completed. Our contractor, Volker Laser, have made the most of the patches of good weather and worked tirelessly to get the waterproofing down in between some significant rainfall.

The high containment kerbs are now being installed to lane 1, and around 1500m has been completed of a 2250m long bridge. Once lane 1 is completed, then the standard half batter (HB) kerbs will start to be installed to lane 2. There is still a lot of work to do, including the mortar pointing by hand of the gaps between each kerb. This has already commenced and the workers doing this must be complimented on their ability to be able to work away at this laborious task. If you stand at one end of the bridge and look along the kerb edges to the other side, it must be quite a daunting task to be given!

Concrete soffit repairs are still ongoing and you can still see scaffolding being erected and dismantled. Concrete repairs are likely to be completed in the next week or so. 

Once all the kerbs are installed and pointed, then the asphalting of the road surface can take place, with movement joint installation to follow. 

We are pleased to report that the works are progressing well and that we're still on for an end of September finish. The waterproofing of the concrete deck is around 90% complete and, hopefully, with a spell of rain free weather over the next few days, we will get that completed. Deck surface preparation is essentially complete, with only isolated areas still needing a final shot blast to provide a contaminant free surface and a suitable "key" to help the waterproofing bond to the bridge deck. The installation of the high containment Trief kerbs has also commenced, with around 500m of kerbs installed since work commenced on Wednesday afternoon. The bridge is 2250m long, so that's a total of 4500m of kerbs to install, so our contractor Volker Laser and their kerbing subcontractor are working at a good pace. The concrete soffit repairs on the cantilever edges are still ongoing but these should be completed sometime in the next week or so.  Once all the kerbs are installed we will be able to start on the asphalt installation, which will then allow the new 42 movement joints to be fitted. Works to replace the joints and surfacing on the ramps will commence in August. 

Our unaudited accounts are now available for viewing on our website under the Board Documents tab.

We've been pushing on with the concrete deck repairs since our last update on 9 May and we're grateful to our contractor, Volker Laser, for their hard work in maintaining good progress on our major project. We're pleased that the hydro demolition has finally finished and are grateful to all of our shared path active travel users for their patience while we finished this safety critical works. 

We've now completed half of the repairs required to the cantilever edge soffits and this is progressing at a good pace, and the repairs to the concrete slab edges at the movement joint locations are about 75% complete. You'll see the safety boat on station most days as the scaffolders erect and dismantle four scaffolds on a rolling basis, working in synchronisation with the team repairing the concrete to keep work progressing efficiently.

The waterproofing to the concrete deck is also around 50% complete as we took advantage of the recent good weather. This is more than 7,500m2 of deck and 30,000m2 of waterproofing product (because it's a four coat system). We hope for some more dry days in June to allow us to maintain the momentum, although the weather forecast is not great for the next week or so! Our contractor will look to "chase" the good weather to make the most of dry spells.  

The works are still progressing to a good pace and are on schedule to be completed by the end of September 2024. A lorry mounted concrete shot blaster has been used to clean the surface of the concrete deck over approximately 3000m2 of lane 2. This removes the final remnants of the old surfacing and deck imperfections immediately before waterproofing commences.  The waterproofing system is a four coat proprietary system from GCP Stirling Lloyd, called Eliminator. It is a cold applied and sprayed system, that will protect the concrete bridge deck below from contamination. The first coat is a primer to help with bonding the further layers and to help the system adhere to the bridge deck, and the second and third coats are a waterproof resin membrane. Barrels of the product are located in the back of a lorry, and a pump system, a bit like a power washer, allows the product to be sprayed through a nozzle onto the deck. The second coat is yellow in colour and the third coat is white. Although the two layers are an identical product, the colours are deliberately contrasted so that the skilled operative can see where they have sprayed, so that they don't miss any bits! The fourth, and final coat, is a bond coat, and is red in colour. This top coat will melt when the very hot asphalt surfacing is applied in the future, so that the waterproofing is fully composite with the concrete bridge deck and asphalt running surface. All four coats have been applied between joints 3 to 10, around 1400m2. The yellow and white coats are currently being applied between joint 10 to 13. 

The outer concrete cantilever deck soffit repairs are still ongoing, with four scaffolds present on the bridge, now working closer to the Fife end of the bridge. This work will continue for a few weeks yet as we make essential repairs underneath the bridge. The hydrodemolition to the top surface of defective concrete deck ends are almost finished, with just a few remaining deck ends to be completed. The hydrodemolition works above the waterfront path will commence tomorrow, so please be aware, that for your safety, a small pedestrian/cycling diversion will be in place around the waterfront below the bridge. The bridge shared path will remain open, but all users will be diverted to use the lift, because the stairs will be closed. This diversion will be required for up to two days. 

Works are currently progressing well, although the wind and rain over the last week couple of weeks did hamper contractor efforts at erecting the scaffolding needed to provide access to repair the concrete soffits of the outer carriageway cantilevers. You will see up to four scaffolds that reach out over the edge of the bridge. Weights, or kentledge, in the form of precast concrete blocks located on the carriageway, support a cantilever structural arrangement of scaffold tubes to allow us to access the underside of the deck, without the need for support from the bridge itself. This arrangement helps us to be more flexible in reaching the areas that need repair. The windy weather lost us a few days of work on this element of our works, but in response, Volker Laser will be bringing more scaffold and labour resource to site and we are hoping for good weather as we move into the latter part of April and into May, so that the good progress can be maintained.

All the old kerbs have now been completely removed (4.5km of concrete HB and L kerbs have been taken away for recycling) and all the asphalt has been scraped off the deck. Volker Laser are progressing with the deck preparation, and you will still see the fine milling machines at work as they remove the remnants of the bitumen used as deck waterproofing in the 1960's. More boot prints from the workers in the 1960's have been uncovered and these help connect us to our colleagues from the past! These imprints will be removed when the final deck preparation is undertaken just prior to waterproofing commencing. 

The uneven concrete edges that supported the old movement joints continue to be broken out with hydrodemolition techniques and reinstatement follows soon after. The contractor commenced this work at joint 1 in Dundee and is now up to joint 21, and with 42 joint edges to prepare, you will see this work continue for a few weeks yet.

Today marks the start of our fourth week of works and we remain on programme. All the road surfacing asphalt, over 2000 tonnes, has been removed over the full length of the carriageway (which is 2250 metres long x 7.2m wide). Volker Laser, the main contractor, have also removed over a kilometre of both the lane 2 half battered and lane 1 high containment "L" kerbs for recycling. Wheeled excavators, or "Rubber Ducks", are carrying out this task carefully to avoid damaging the vehicle parapet and 20 tonne lorries are being loaded regularly to keep the bridge clear of kerb debris. Housekeeping of the site is very important on such a confined bridge, where access for plant must be maintained over the full length of the bridge at all times. 

The kerb removal will continue this week, while at the same time Volker Laser continue to prepare the concrete surface for waterproofing by using the fine milling machines to gently scabble, or scrape, the surface. This will make sure that the waterproofing will stick to the concrete bridge deck. The concrete repairs to the movement joint edges are well underway, with high water pressure jets (or hydro-demolition) techniques being used to remove the defective concrete at the deck edges, where the old movement joints have been removed. This work is taking place in containment pods to keep all bridge users safe as the concrete is chipped away. As a result, and to maintain progress, shared path users might be asked to wait for a maximum of ten minutes before being allowed to pass the works area. We appreciate that this is disruptive and we apologise for all disruption caused to our users in this regard.  It also won't be long before you start to see scaffolding appear on the bridge deck, which is designed to cantilever over the parapet, so that repairs to the concrete soffits can start.  

We are starting concrete repairs on 20 March 2024. This involves using high pressure water jets to remove defective concrete. As a result, and for your safety, the works are self contained within work enclosures, protected in all directions. However, as a further precaution, we may ask pedestrians and cyclists to wait for up to ten minutes on the shared path until we can confirm that it is safe for you to pass. The shared central path will remain open at all times, as will the contraflow, but please expect delays if you are a walker or wheeler. We are really sorry for the inconvenience this might cause you.