J.R. Vinagro accepted the challenge to demolish the Washington Bridge in Providence Rhode Island. We are providing direction as to how to remove the bridge, as well as the crews, equipment, and performing the demolition to safely remove the superstructure and the substructure of the I-195 Washington Bridge. We are using multiple methods to remove the bridge, hammering concrete including the substructure (piers and abutments) down to mudline in the Seekonk River below and saw cutting the deck. Removing drop in girders, cantilever beams, and spandrel arch walls that are not only over land but over water as well. As stated in Construction Equipment Guide, written by Brittney Christopher, “all concrete is trucked back to J.R. Vinagro Corporation's facility in Johnston, R.I., where the concrete is downsized, crushed and recycled into usable concrete product… The Washington Bridge alone will produce approximately 75,000 tons of recycled concrete product.”
This being one of the most heavily traveled bridges in Providence, with its emergency closure, this project has an aggressive timeline with a completion date of less than 6 months. Along with the aggressive timeline, hammering concrete can only be done during a certain period of daytime. J.R. Vinagro will also have to pick girders with the bridge deck on them, weighing close to 300,000 lbs. and 120’ long, and land them on a barge due to the Seekonk River below. The Washington Bridge also is weight restricted to 25 tons, meaning we must use machines a third of the size of what we would normally use for a project like this. Lastly there are utilities below the bridge that prevented us from demolishing the bridge in a traditional way which would be hammering the concrete beams to the ground below.
J.R. Vinagro was able to develop a schedule to work around the noise restrictions by grouping certain shifts to hammer the bridge and certain shifts to pick and load out bridge debris. Due to proper scheduling and a hard-working crew of experts in their field, we were able to beat our first milestone by 2 weeks. We will continue to work multiple crews with 60-ton and 100-ton machines to continue the momentum throughout the project. Working with the General Contractor we were able to size the pieces of bridge properly so we could maximize the efficiency of the barges being used and always have a free barge to land debris on. J.R. Vinagro was able to effectively stagger our CAT 315’s along the bridge deck which allowed multiple machines to demo at once and not go over the weight restrictions for the bridge. Utilities underground required us to use a mobile crane to pick the pieces of bridge and land them in a specified area to be hammered, where traditionally they would be hammered in place. As stated, before J.R. Vinagro has completed multiple groups weeks ahead of schedule with Group 1 predicted to be completed on November 19, 2024, and actually being completed on November 8th. Group 4 was completed on October 24, 2024, instead of the predicted completion date of November 17th. Phase 1 of our demolition involving the superstructure was completed on February 19th, 2025, and Phase 2 involving the substructure started on March 3rd, 2025.
See this project in Construction Equipment Guide here: Washington Bridge in Providence, R.I., Undergoes Demolition