During the West Virginia DOT bidding process, only two contractors felt confident enough to take on the challenges of the $2.7-million project. Both agreed that the proprietary access system designed and manufactured by Beeche Systems Corp., of Scotia, New York, was the only solution.

The logistics of the New River Gorge Bridge make its cleaning a mammoth undertaking because accessibility is extremely difficult. The bridge boasts a 370-ft. drop from the top of the deck to the bottom of the arch, the equivalent of lowering people and equipment from the top of a 37-story building. Additionally, access from the bottom is impossible since the river is 876 ft. from the bridge deck.

What the Beeche system supplies is fully mobile and multi-directional access that can easily and quickly traverse the entire bridge with minimal manpower. From the system’s platforms, workers can be freely lowered, raised, and moved laterally to all the work areas. With 2.3-million sq.ft. of bridge to be cleaned using one million gallons of water applied at 40,000 psi, project contractor Specialty Groups, Inc., working with Nick Chirigos of Zenith Painting Co., relied on the access system to address the unique challenges of the bridge.

Chirigos, the project manager, said the companies chose the technology because no other system would have allowed them to even consider making a bid on the unusual and difficult job. Since work began on the bridge on March 16, SGI/Zenith has benefitted from the advantages of the technology with speed, efficiency of work, minimal downtime, and ease of access to all points of the bridge structure. The project was scheduled to be completed by the end of September.

The three distinct areas of work are the deck support trusses, vertical supports, and the arch truss. Each area offers a unique access challenge that was successfully overcome by a combination of suspended platforms and access systems. To clean the deck trusses, multi-level platforms were placed on either side of the bridge and attached to C-Frame rolling carriage units that traverse the entire length of the bridge. Unlike typical scaffolding that needs to be assembled and then torn down for each bridge section, the rolling units expedite the movement of people and material to the next location, saving extensive downtime and man hours.

To reach the vertical supports and the underside of the deck trusses, Beeche’s aluminum space frame platform was suspended under the bridge deck. The 16- by 80-ft. platform can be traversed laterally within each bay using rolling carriage units, and raised or lowered by air-powered hoists. Moving the platform between the bridge bays is highly time and cost efficient, taking less than four hours using a six-man crew and a crane, as compared with conventional scaffolds that can take days to move.

The pinned-arch truss spans 1,700 ft. and measures 53 ft. between the top and bottom chords. It was the most demanding and difficult piece of the entire project. To meet the challenge, Beeche designed two work baskets that suspend from a monorail system mounted to the aluminum space frame platform. The baskets can travel around the entire perimeter of the platform and then be raised or lowered to reach all points of the arch structure. This permits the workers to control their exact location and to reposition themselves quickly and efficiently for an optimal working environment.