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will be nearly doubled with the creation of up to six new
express managed lanes on IH-635 and four new managed
lanes on portions of IH-35.
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
Heavy steel forms from bridge beams required precision handling
by the crane operator.
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, dentresistant
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
Contractors World International Vol 6 No 1
Various cranes, from mobile to crawler are
called in as required to lift the formwork
modules.
The choice of cranes was dictated by access
and the ground conditions.
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