My picture of steelfixers working on a deviator segment appeared on the cover of NCE

The year when Portugal was to host the last great world's fair of the century - Expo '98 - was to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the sea route to India.  These achievements would be landmarked by the construction of the Vasco de Gamma Bridge.  Running from Sacavem in the north to Coina in the south, a total length of over 17km, it is, in fact, five different bridge linked together.  The longest section, the 6.4km Central Viaduct, was designed by Kvaerner Technology.

My role was as one of the design managers for Tejoprojecto, a joint venture between Kvaerner Technology, COBA and EEG.  Although the detailed design of each section of bridge was carried out in the head offices of each of the design companies, all coordination work, design work that affected all parts of the bridge,   progress reporting and translations were carried out in the Tejoprojecto office at site.

Thedeck units were made in 10 independant segments and then stitched together.  Once in postion, they were then stitched again to form a nine span continuous viaduct.  There were 81 spans in total in the central viaduct

The central viaduct during construction