Webuild S p A : accomplishes the supporting cables with 38,000 km steel wires for Continental Europe’s second longest suspension bridge

MILAN, January 4, 2022 -The complex installation of the two supporting cables between the two towers of Romania's Braila Bridge has been accomplished on the second longest suspension bridge on continental Europe that is gradually taking shape thanks to a joint-venture led by Webuild. In less than four months more than 150 technicians and specialised workers installed the two cables, consisting of approximately 18,000 intertwined steel wires (more than 9,000 for each cable) weighing a combined 6,775 tonnes and stretching for a combined 38,000 kilometres, almost equivalent to the Earth's circumference. An extremely challenging and innovative project involving more than 900 people and 100 direct suppliers.

This new milestone brings the project to 59% completion.

The bridge, which is being built together with IHI Infrastructure Systems Co Ltd, will connect the two shores of the Danube River in the Galati-Braila area, reducing crossing times for approximately 7,000 vehicles a day, which have had to rely on ferries up until now.

Commissioned by the National Company for Road Infrastructure Administration (CNAIR), a state entity under Romania's Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, the project is financed by the EU's Operational Programme for Large Infrastructure (POIM). It will have a central main span of 1,120 metres, but its total length will be 1,975 metres. The bridge will have four lanes, emergency lanes and cycle paths. On either side of the bridge there will be an access viaduct approximately 90 metres long and a 220 metre viaduct to cross the Braila Galati railway and a new network of 21 kilometres of connecting roads.

The Braila Bridge will be the latest in Webuild's large portfolio of bridges and viaducts built throughout the world: a total of nearly 1,000 kilometres - the equivalent of a single bridge linking Paris with Berlin. Among those most recently built are the Long Beach International Gateway Bridge, formerly known as the Gerald Desmond replacement bridge, the Genova San Giorgio Bridge, an engineering feat completed in a little more than a year, and the iconic Third Bridge over the Bosphorus in Turkey.