The innovative Kenaston Flyover Bridge in suburban Winnipeg has won the 2017 Canadian Institute of Steel Construction (CISC) Manitoba/Northwestern Ontario Steel Design Award in the bridge category.
Joint winners of the award are the City of Winnipeg (owner); Capitol Steel Corporation (fabricator/detailer/erector/member); Dillon Consulting Limited (structural engineer); M.D. Steele Construction Ltd. (general contractor); and Dowco Consultants Ltd. (steel detailer).
"A flyover is a hybrid overpass with a curve in the middle," said Kris Overwater, chief operating officer of Capitol Steel in Winnipeg. "It’s located in the south end of Winnipeg, not far from the main campus of the University of Manitoba."
Capitol Steel supplied, delivered and erected the steel superstructure of the flyover. Containing 400 tonnes of steel, the six trapezoidal box girders were arranged in two lines of three and measure 115 feet long by seven feet deep and 11 feet wide.
Fabrication of the girders took four months in Capitol’s 160,000-square-foot plant in Winnipeg.
"The main challenge we faced was dealing with the geometry of the girders and keeping within a tolerance of one millimetre," said Overwater.
The girders were installed in about two weeks in the spring of 2014.
The grade-separated Kenaston Flyover is part of the Waverley West Arterial Roads Project.
The overpass spans north-south on Kenaston Boulevard and extends it to the Perimeter Highway that encircles Winnipeg.
"Kenaston was designated a primary economic route…due to the linkage it provides between major industrial and commercial sites and national and international trade routes," said Robert Taylor, a structural engineer with Dillon Consulting, which acted as prime consultant on the project, responsible for design and contract administration.
The first flyover structure of its kind in Winnipeg, the overpass enables uninterrupted travel along Kenaston as well as Bishop Grandin Boulevard, a major east-west arterial route.
Taylor said the extension has saved money for the many truckers who use Kenaston and has relieved congestion on adjacent roads in new residential neighbourhoods that are spreading into southwest Winnipeg. The project had to deal with some unique design and construction challenges.
"One of the fundamental challenges was accommodating the future expected extension of Bishop Grandin, in addition to satisfying the roadway alignment of the realigned Bishop Grandin and extended Kenaston," said Taylor. "This greatly restricted a number of the structural configurations that could have been used to simplify the design."
To keep the approach embankments within the property that was available to the project, and to maintain the stability of the surrounding soil, Dillon installed mechanically stabilized earth wall embankments with light-weight concrete backfill.
There were also construction challenges such as poor subsurface soil conditions; the presence of fibre optic communication cables and a high-pressure gas line onsite; maintaining four lanes of traffic through the site during construction; and trying to stay warm during Winnipeg’s coldest winter in over 100 years.
The Kenaston project team received its award in a spring 2017 gala ceremony at the RBC Convention Centre in downtown Winnipeg.
Gordie Tumilson, CISC regional representative for Manitoba and northwestern Ontario, said there were award submissions in 11 categories, with 54 winning companies.
The winning projects are as follows:
• the University of Manitoba Active Living Centre in Winnipeg (Recreational Award of Merit);
• a rail loadout tower in Yorkton, Sask. (Outside of Region Award of Merit);
• Glass House Skylofts in Winnipeg (Residential Award of Merit);
• East St. Paul Operations Building in East St. Paul, Man. (Public Award of Merit);
• St. Gianna Church in Winnipeg (Commercial Award of Merit);
• Manitoba Hydro Bipole III Converter Building — Riel Station in Winnipeg (Industrial Award of Merit);
• Canadian Mennonite University Marpeck Commons and Bridge in Winnipeg (Bridges Award of Merit);
• Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Heritage Wall in Winnipeg (Architecture Award);
• Solar Tracker in Sperling, Man.; and
• RBC Convention Centre Winnipeg Expansion (Engineering Award).
"This was the first-ever awards ceremony in the Manitoba and northwestern Ontario region of the CISC," said Tumilson. "In the future, the awards will take place every two years with the next ceremony planned for April 2019 at the convention centre."
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