A very prestigious, national award for a project on one of our harbour bridges.

Halifax Harbour Bridges (HHB) says the MacKay deck replacement project won an Award of Excellence in the transportation category at the 2024 Canadian Consulting Engineering Awards, October 24.

HHB says it was last November when the 54-year-old harbour span had two 10,000-kilogram steel deck sections replaced using a 100-tonne crane that was nearly the entire width of the bridge.

It not only required the bridge to be closed for two weekends in a row, according to Communications Manager, Stephen Proctor, but also a lot of logistics.

He tells our newsroom, receiving the honor was a very pleasant surprise.

“The project was planned for a good 18 months before it actually took place. It involves logistics of getting the right people, the right teams. Our engineers of record, COWI, spent a number of hours planning it. It took 90 hours to actually do the work. We used primary local engineers. But this was the result of many, many months of planning to get it right.”

Proctor says it started after some inspections that showed cracking, they then determined a solution and got to work.

“You have this skilled staff on hand to bring in from elsewhere in the country, or to draw in the local labour force. So, there’s a limited window and we try to use that window as effectively as we can. Usually, we do some things at night, and sometimes we can do single lane closures, but there are times like this where it required the full weekend closure to get the job done.”

“We actually had holes in the bridge where you could look down to the ocean.”

Procter tell us, to receive the award feels fantastic.

“You know, people don’t really think about the bridge more than something to just come and go back and forth safely and efficiently. And, in a moment like this, we can show that we are more than just a road. There’s a lot of engineering… a lot of work that goes into what we do and we’re proud to be recognized at the national level for it.”

HHB says the MacKay and Macdonald Bridges have about 60,000 vehicles that cross it every day, support over 1,000 jobs and generate more than $120 million to the economy every year.