Walsh Construction Co. has been selected to build a new westbound span for the I-195 Washington Bridge in Providence, R.I., restoring a crossing forced to close in December 2023 due to advanced structural deterioration.

Walsh and design partner WSP will begin work on the $339-million design-build project next month, according to the Rhode Island Dept. of Transportation. The agency has also budgeted a $10-million bonus for completion ahead of the scheduled November 2028 target date, with a $25,000 daily penalty for missed milestone dates. Contingency funds, inspection and owner’s representative services and other “soft costs” could bring the rebuild project’s total cost to as much as $427 million, RIDOT says.

“It’s an excellent bid, it’s an excellent price,” RIDOT director Peter Alviti told a June 6 press conference announcing the selection.

He noted that while the Walsh/WSP cost estimate for the best-value procurement was approximately $50 million less than the bid from shortlisted competitor American Bridge Co./MLJ Contracting Corp., both teams’ technical proposals were “within a couple of points of each other.”

According to RIDOT, the five-lane replacement bridge will be more than 450 ft shorter than its 1,671-ft-long predecessor, which was closed on short notice in December 2023 when structural deterioration discovered during a repair project was found to be more widespread than had been reported during previous scheduled inspections.

Last August, RIDOT filed suit against 13 engineers and contractors that had inspected or performed work on the bridge over the past decade. That litigation is still pending. Meanwhile, the 25-year-old eastbound span of the Washington Bridge has been temporarily reconfigured to handle two-way traffic until a replacement is built.

After finding structural deterioration in December 2023, the westbound bridge closed and the eastbound bridge has handled two-way traffic ever since. The westbound bridge was demolished after it was determined in March 2024 that structural deterioration on the 56-year-old span was worse than originally thought.
Image courtesy Rhode Island Dept. of Transportation

Full demolition of the westbound bridge is scheduled to be completed in December, with removal of the last underwater foundations.

Walsh’s replacement design calls for a new substructure with fewer in-water piers in the Seekonk River, a capacity of 80,000 vehicles a day and features that will make the bridge easier to inspect and maintain during its 100-year design life.

Walsh Construction program manager Chuck Parrish told reporters that his team modeled its approach on the recently completed south span of the I-270 Chain of Rocks Bridge, a 5,400-ft-long concrete deck steel girder structure across the Mississippi River Walsh built as part of a $496.2-mllion project for the Illinois and Missouri Depts. of Transportation.

“The streamlined repetitive design of the structure elements…combined with the consistent and easily produceable steel members allowed for rapid construction with high quality,” Parrish said, adding that the Chain of Rocks Bridge is nearly three-and-a-half times the length of the planned Washington Bridge, and was completed in two years.

The unique opportunity to essentially build the same bridge twice, Parrish noted, “gave us the confidence to commit to both the price and schedule that we surely can meet in delivering the new bridge” in Rhode Island.

RIDOT’s funding strategy for the new bridge includes up to $334.6 million in GARVEE bonding capacity, and two federal Mega-INFRA grants totaling $221 million finalized earlier this year. The state will also utilize more than $107 million from its capital projects budget, a repurposed $15-million federal BUILD grant, and $35 million in unused federal pandemic aid.

As such, Gov. Dan McKee (D) told reporters, “the new bridge will be built at no additional cost to taxpayers.”

The road to replacement

The selection of Walsh for the westbound Washington Bridge rebuild comes nearly a year after RIDOT’s initial RFP for a fast-tracked replacement attracted no bidders. A reworked procurement process offering similar early completion incentives with a less-aggressive timeline led to the shortlisting of Walsh and the American Bridge/MLJ team last December.

In addition to the new westbound bridge, the project also includes several measures aimed at addressing longstanding congestion upgrades along the I-195 corridor, including reconfigured travel lanes and widening two existing bridges in East Providence. Prefabricated arches will be built over local streets on both the Providence and East Providence sides of the river to mimic the look the original Washington Bridge, RIDOT says.

The agency has also stepped up the frequency and content of its inspection program for the Washington Bridge’s eastbound span, including the addition of automated monitoring equipment. RIDOT director Alviti told reporters that two separate assessments of structural loads commissioned by the agency determined that eastbound bridge’s structural integrity had not been compromised by the loads of two-way traffic and temporary concrete barriers

Alviti expressed confidence that the eastbound bridge will continue to perform safely during construction of the new westbound span. He cited a recently received follow-up loading capacity analysis of the structure that, “found no change to the original assessment.”