Coming to you live from high above the Hudson River are the fastest members of the animal kingdom! The Tappan Zee Bridge’s peregrine falcons have returned to their man-made nest box to prepare for the nesting season and can be viewed on the project’s “FalconCam.”
Long before the first foundations of the New NY Bridge project were installed, Tappan Zee Constructors, LLC (TZC) engaged experts at HDR Inc., an architectural and engineering firm with offices in Pearl River, NY, to build the new crossing in a virtual world.
Members of the New NY Bridge outreach team recently met with students at Anne M. Dorner Middle School in Ossining on the eve of the students’ entry in the 2015 Engineering Encounters Bridge Design Contest, a national competition that provides students with a realistic and engaging introduction to engineering.
Located at the intersection of the active Hudson River and the busy New York State Thruway, the New NY Bridge project is passed by more than 138,000 vehicles every day. Building America’s largest bridge project in this bustling area compelled the project team to make security one of its top priorities. To keep the public and project safe, Tappan Zee Constructors, LLC (TZC) engaged one of the nation’s leading private security organizations, AlliedBarton Security Services and its White Plains office.
As support columns for the New NY Bridge rise across the Hudson River, workers at an upstate facility are hard at work preparing critical elements for the project’s next stage of construction. A few miles south of Albany, a major Tappan Zee Constructors, LLC (TZC) staging yard at the Port of Coeymans (pronounced KWEE-mans) will be the assembly site for hundreds of enormous steel girders that will connect the columns and support the new crossing’s road deck.
Design-build is an alternative to the traditional construction method of “design-bid-build.” In a design-bid-build arrangement, the state would issue one contract to design the bridge and all of its components. Then, bids for the construction would be solicited. Under a design-build contract, the contractor that builds the structure is also responsible for the development and integrity of the design. If construction cost overruns arise relating to the design, they are the responsibility of the contactor, not taxpayers or toll payers. Design changes under the old design-bid-build system often led to past project delays and cost overruns that had to be borne by taxpayers and toll payers. Design-build shifts most of the risk to the contractor.
