Sharkbite Heavy Haul Bridge and Light-Duty Vehicle Underpass

Albian Sands is located near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. Our oil sands client has capitalized on the available bitumen reserves at this site by installing facilities to mine oil sand, extracting the bitumen, and upgrading the bitumen to synthetic crude oil. To support future mine growth, new infrastructure was required to debottleneck delivery of oil-sands material to the ore processing facility, while maintaining full light-duty maintenance vehicle access to the operating plant extraction facility.

Ledcor's scope of work included the Design-Build of new infrastructure consisting of two bridges which could handle the loading of two-way heavy haul truck traffic, tailings pipeline and maintenance corridor, and two-way light duty vehicle traffic.

New infrastructure also included an arch plate underpass to maintain light-duty vehicle access under the new Sharkbite mine haul road. This required the structural capabilities to support continuous mine ore hauling, tailings operations, and light-duty vehicle traffic access to the existing plant facilities.

Environmental considerations for all the new infrastructure required the development of a wildlife access corridor adjacent to the new Muskeg River crossing.

Prior to commencing new infrastructure construction, the project team was required to demolish an existing 150-ton bridge structure crossing the Muskeg River at the new alignment. This process was completed while following strict Federal and Provincial government environmental regulations which required prevention of any demolition debris from entering the existing watercourse.

The project team successfully completed all design, demolition, and construction scopes meeting the clients' contract schedule requirements in just under 13 months.