Formwork & Falsework International Vol 2 No 1
If Its Big and Ambitious Then It Must Be Texas! - Page 2 of 3
LBJ Express Continues to Take Shape
Some consider the LBJ Express project in Dallas, Texas to be the largest bridge and road project in the United States, and when you consider some of the project statistics, it would be difficult to disagree.
- $2.7 billion in cost
- 200 companies involved in construction
- 2,000 construction workers on the project
- 500,000 lf (150,000 lm) of utility relocations
- 9,000,000 yd³ (6.9 million m³) of excavation
- 400 trucks being utilized
- 500 alternative pieces of equipment being used
- 5,715 bridge beams to place
Challenging Formwork Demands
For a large part of the contract, the USA company, EFCO, has been part of several components of the LBJ Express project since the beginning and is currently providing formwork, engineering and field service support on Segments 1 and 2 being constructed by Trinity Infrastructure LLC. of Dallas, Texas.
Trinity Infrastructure LLC is a partnership between Ferrovial–Agroman and W.W. Webber LLC.
It’s Got to Look Good
Aesthetics have been a major area of concern on this project. Establishing and maintaining a consistent concrete appearance was just one of the criteria that drove the decision to select EFCO as the formwork provider.
All EFCO systems capitalize on the long-lasting, dent-resistant qualities of steel formwork face sheets. Grade strips, feature strips and assorted other architectural design features can be easily fastened directly to any EFCO all-steel face sheet with self-tapping screws.
Trinity Infrastructure’s complete forming package included the EFCO Round Column and PLATE GIRDER forming systems. Column requirements for Segment 1 and 2 of the LBJ Express varied in dimension from 48” to 72” (1 m to 2 m) diameter and up to 80’-0” (24 m) in height.
Architectural reveal strips made of special UHMW plastic provided the architectural design.
Cap sizes varied from 4’-0” to 6’-8” (1 m to 2 m) wide and up to 10’-0” tall x 104’-0” long (3 m x 31 m). EFCO PLATE GIRDER forms are a logical choice with cap dimensions of this size. Designed to be self-spanning, the shear enormity and weight of these cap forms required EFCO’s 100K shoring towers to support the 1,725,000 lb (782,500 kg) load for some of these caps
Another Section. Another Contractor
Archer Western Contractors, Ltd and EFCO have teamed up to complete another important portion of this overall project. Archer Western is working on a $12M segment of this project on the East side of IH-35E from Loop 12 to IH-635.
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