Flatiron West, Inc.

Scope Of Work

Flatiron constructed the Athabasca River Bridge in Ft. McMurray, Alberta, approximately 270 miles north of Edmonton. The 108-foot-wide, 1,548-foot-long bridge deck is the largest in Alberta. The stout structure was built to accommodate more than three times the average weight of most bridges, with a capacity of 1,100-metric-ton loads.

This project is needed to facilitate the accelerated development of an area of the Alberta Oil Sands, a natural resource that can be processed into lightweight crude oil and associated fuels. The city of Ft. McMurray, which exists to support the Oil Sands, has nearly doubled in population in the past five years. Highway 63 runs north-south through the center of Ft. McMurray and is heavily congested, particularly during shift changes at the local mines. Here Flatiron constructed a new steel girder bridge parallel to existing bridges. The bridge added five lanes to the previous four-lane configuration, and eventually expanded to a total of 10 lanes.