Earth, Inc.

The structures represented in the following photographs are prime examples of simply-stated, yet elegantly-designed and constructed bridges providing access over Pennsylvania's roadways and streams. The first project i.e., the Bridge Replacement at Milepost 197.2 over the Mainline of the Pennsylvania Turnpike just west of the Kittatinny and Blue Mountain Tunnels involves a project brought about in the traditional Design/Bid/Build (D/B/B) method of project delivery.

The second project, a major bridge crossing of the Mon-Fayette Expressway high above the Monongahela River, while also of the D/B/B category, was, nonetheless, redesigned as part of an Alternate Design process by the successful contractor through the design engineer he hired to provide a product that could be delivered to the project's owner, i.e., the Pennsylvania Turnpike, on a more competitive basis than the originally-designed bridge.

The remaining three bridge projects at S.R. 0040, Section L10, S.R. 3023, Section A10, and S.R. 4035, Section B01, were developed under an increasingly-popular method of project delivery, i.e., Design/Build (D/B). In this process, only Preliminary Design was performed/provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation for these three bridges, and successful bidders employed design engineers to complete Final Design of products friendly to the means and methods of their choosing – and correspondingly, products that could be delivered cost-effectively and efficiently to the client.

Earth, Inc. is pleased to have been given the opportunity to be the Geotechnical Engineer of Record on all five of these beautifully conceived, designed, and constructed projects.