WORKERS installing the steel beams for the new A432 Badminton Road bridge over the M4 expected to have all eight installed by this evening.
The first two beams of the new £20 million bridge were in place by 7am today, with the second pair put into place around 11am.
National Highways engineering manager Terry Robinson said all eight were expected to be in place by 8pm today.
The contractors will still have work to so tomorrow, installing formwork to enable the concrete part of the structure to be poured at a later date.
The 46m steel beams – the outer ones weighing 110 tonnes and the inner ones 85 tonnes each – were lifted in pairs by a hugh crane supplied by Avonmouth firm King Lifting.
The bridge has also been designed locally, by the Bristol office of global engineering firm WSP.
Design manager Liam Hennessey was at a viewpoint overlooking the bridge near Winterbourne on Saturday.
He said: “It’s not often we get something we’ve designed on our doorstep.
“You sit in rooms and plan for these things – there’s a lot of satisfaction from seeing it slowly go into place.”
As well as the work on the bridge, National Highways has taken the opportunity to carry out other maintenance work between the M4’s Bristol and Bath junctions, including insepecting other structures on the closed stretch of road, cleaning gulleys and clearing vegetation.
Terry said: “We’re maximising the use of this road closure.”
