With a completion date of Oct 2017, the Vedder River Bridge has relieved the traffic congestion that has been building in the area of years. The Vedder River is a well-known local river, to which the existing bridge divides the Chilliwack river and the Vedder river. The original Vedder River Bridge was built in 1947 by our legacy company Western Bridge and Steel Fabrication Ltd., and the new bridge was fabricated and erected by Supreme Steel.
The main contract included 350 tonnes of steel to be fabricated into box sections and arch sections and shipped to site and erected alongside the Vedder River. The box sections and arches were field welded onsite to create a uniform look of the bottom chord and arch. This was tricky as we started work in January, and the Chilliwack area had many wind and snow storms reaching temp as low as -17-degree C. Once fully erected alongside the Vedder River, the bridge was then launched across (without the deck). This was the first arch bridge to be launched across a river in North America.
