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UK gets first marketplace for second-hand steel bridges
Rod Sweet Global Construction Review
Not a new idea: Network Rail’s 53m-long Tan House Footbridge near Wokingham used repurposed steel tubes for all column elements, their cross-bracings, and the fan members supporting the deck. Image: By Luis Moya, courtesy of Format Engineers
An online catalogue went live this week, listing redundant steel bridge structures around the country that clients might want to use to reduce the carbon footprint of their projects.
Asset owners can upload details of structures they no longer need, creating a marketplace that other owners, engineers, contractors and local authorities can tap into.
The idea of the site, called Re-Bridge, is to keep steel spans and other bridge elements in use for longer, cutting material costs and embodied carbon.
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“Re-Bridge is about moving from theory to implementation,” said Hazel Needham, associate structural engineer at Expedition Engineering, co-creator of the catalogue and co-author of a recent report, Steel Reuse in Bridges.
“With the right tools and collaboration, existing spans can become valuable assets for new projects.”
Nipping down to the second-hand bridge store?
Bridges must meet strict specifications for strength and performance, and be in a usable geometrical shape, so it’s not as easy as nipping down to the second-hand bridge store.
But the report’s authors note that some situations make second-hand bridge parts a viable alternative, such as using a redundant road span for a new pedestrian bridge.
The report describes an example in Paris where a new footbridge was created over the Saint-Denis Canal for the 2024 Olympics using the 255-tonne steel span of a nearby road bridge slated for demolition.
People submitting their old bridge elements to the catalogue are asked to detail the structure’s specifications.
Waste as a resource
Closer to home, the report cites Network Rail’s 53m-long Tan House Footbridge near Wokingham, which used repurposed steel tubes for all column elements, their cross-bracings, and the fan members supporting the deck.
Format Engineers, also the co-creator of the Re-Bridge catalogue, helped design the Tan House Footbridge. The company said the team used generative digital methods to create a design that matched the available stock of old steel.
“This catalogue is the first step towards bridge stock-led design,” said Camille Chevrier, associate engineer at Format. “It will change the question from ‘what can we build?’ to ‘what do we already have?’ We’re redefining waste as a resource, one span at a time.”
The platform is now live and open to contributions from the industry.
Re-Bridge has been developed with support from regenerative design consultancy, Useful Simple Trust.
