On Thursday, the American Council of Engineering Companies announced their nominees for the Engineering Excellence Awards in the State of Illinois and Benesch, the engineering company behind the I-74 Bridge project received a nomination for their work bringing the bridge to life. The I-74 Bridge Project is one of 11 infrastructure projects in the State of Illinois nominated for this award and they described the I-74 Bridge Project:
“Spanning the Mississippi River, this one-billion-dollar complex, mega-project owned by both the Iowa and Illinois DOTs was borne out of the need for increased capacity and structural improvements along a 7.8-mile stretch of I-74 in the Quad Cities (IL/IA). With the existing infrastructure no longer meeting the current needs and functionally obsolete, an I-74 Iowa-Illinois Corridor Study was undertaken by the IaDOT and IDOT with input from other local agencies and local officials. The signature elements of the project consist of two, basket-handle, through-arch structures that carry four lanes of traffic and full shoulders in each direction, more than doubling traffic capacity. A multi-use path was also incorporated into the project to promote multi-modal transportation and recreation.”
RegionalMediaNews.com contacted representatives of Benesch for comments on the honor…
Andrew Keaschall, PE, SE, VMA | Benesch Illinois Division Manager
“Projects of this magnitude offer a unique opportunity to tackle complex engineering challenges while establishing new signature infrastructure for the communities served by the improvement.
Benesch has been involved with the project since 2009, and it’s been an honor guiding the shared vision of the Iowa and Illinois Departments of Transportation from design into construction. Of course, projects of this complexity require a massive team—beyond the dozens of folks at Benesch who’ve spent years working on I-74, there have been several other firms working to bring this 7-mile corridor to life. In all, the project consisted of hundreds of submittals across nearly two dozen contracts, requiring hundreds of thousands of hours of design and coordination—a real team effort!
Many of us were able to be part of a public celebration when the signature true arch structure over the Mississippi was completed in December 2021; the community played a pivotal role in selecting the design for the new crossing and it was very gratifying to see how much pride they feel now that the project is complete.”
Illinois residents have a chance to speak their mind by voting in the Engineering Excellence Awards. Click here if you’d like to cast a vote. Voting for the Engineering Excellence Awards closes on February 6th, 2023.
