Installation of last segment of 2nd phase of new Zuari bridge in July

Panaji: Work on the second four-lane section of the new Zuari bridge is in advanced stages, and the bridge is expected to open for traffic ahead of the December 2023 deadline set by chief minister Pramod Sawant in his budget speech earlier this year. The closing segment of the second section of the bridge is expected to be installed next month, said Atul Joshi, vice-president (constructions) for the project contractor, Dilip Buildcon.
“Of the 53 steel segments of the second section, 40 have been lifted. And, of the 114 cables, 80 have been installed. The closing segment will be set up by July. After this, if we get a dry spell during the upcoming monsoon, we will do road surfacing, and then the bridge will be ready for traffic by July or August. But the road surfacing work is entirely dependent on the monsoon,” Joshi told TOI.
He said that work on the second section of the new Zuari bridge was expedited after Indian designers were hired for the job.
“Compared to the first section, the work on this section was completed faster. The foreign designers could not come on site due to the Covid pandemic, and everything had to be coordinated online. However, after Indian designers were hired, the manner in which they were doing stage-by-stage analysis before each segment was lifted made their calculations more accurate,” said Joshi.
He said that the Indian designers changed the entire sequence of installing segments, which helped the work speed up. “There are very complex calculations involved. Also, of course, experience from the first phase helped,” said Joshi.