Puente Continental, Maldonado, Peru
Facts and Figures:
Place/Country: Maldonado, Peru
Completion: 2011
Project type: Suspension Bridge
Client: MTC Ministerio de Transportes Peru
Description:
In southern Peru the Puente Continental towers out of the jungle. At 528m and 2,800 tonnes, it is the longest bridge in Peru and the longest suspension bridge ever constructed by Waagner-Biro. The bridge over the “Madre de Dios” is a section of the 2,600 km long “Interoceánic Highway”, a massive infrastructural project designed to strengthen the Peru-Brazil-Bolivia axis.
The project has a long history: the steel construction was delivered back in the 1980s, but, for political and financial reasons, the project was then shelved and not completed until July 2011.
The recent contract to complete the already delivered bridge included detailed project planning, an assembly plan and supervision of the entire installation. The plan’s main focus was on the assembly of the track support, which was carried out using a heavy-duty tensioned cable crane (60 tonnes) operating in a 320m free-span space . Additionally, 24 new cables were delivered, each 600m, and statistical calculations were made for every step of the assembly.
