Think Marketing On Forth Road Bridge Works Fast-Tracked

April 26, 2012 - PRLog -- Think Marketing a local sales and marketing company said “We hope that the Bridge works are done in the next upcoming months and done to the highest standards so that the Bridge will not need worked on for the next years to come.” Officials said the Forth Road Bridge is still 'perfectly safe to use'

A total of 28 nuts on the bolt assemblies have now been found to have cracked. It means the bridge authority will negotiate a contract directly with a preferred supplier rather than putting a contract out to tender. The time saved would allow work to begin before winter this year. Managing Director at ThinkMarketing stated “This is great news for users of this bridge, It means that the Bridge Workers can repair all bolt assemblies before more are damages which could result in more Bridge works which could end up having to close of lanes and cause delays which we don’t want to happen.”

Emergency repairs have been scheduled and the most critical location has already been repaired. Further replacement of faulty bolt assemblies will be carried out over the next few weeks. Engineers now say all of the cable band bolt assemblies should be redesigned and replaced. The cost of redesigning and replacing all of the cable band bolts as well as the nuts has been estimated at £5m. Transport Scotland will give £4.15m and the remainder will be met from bridge authority, FETA. Managing director at ThinkMarketing said “Five million is a lot of money but thanks to Transport Scotland the Bridge authority only need less that a million to get the project underway which hopefully won’t cause any major delays to the traffic”

Barry Colford, Forth Road Bridge's chief engineer and bridgemaster, said: "Thanks to the diligence of our bridge inspectors we are identifying these cracks soon after they occur and are able to respond quickly to implement any repairs that are required.

"Until we have replaced all of these bolt assemblies, it is quite possible that further emergency repairs will have to be carried out at short notice, requiring weekend traffic restrictions."I would stress that the bridge remains perfectly safe to use, the risk that we are trying to prevent is the need for longer term lane closures that would cause unprecedented disruption."