Categoria: Ponti e infrastrutture

Rented Steel Bridge is Keeping Bristol Airport Open Through its Expansion

Airports are among the most awkward places in the built environment to carry out major construction, not because the engineering is exotic but because the asset cannot be switched off while the work proceeds. Passengers keep arriving, aircraft keep turning around, and baggage keeps moving, all while contractors try to thread plant and materials through a site that was never designed to host a building programme.

At Bristol Airport, that tension has produced a neat piece of construction logistics: a 60-metre modular steel bridge, supplied by Acrow and rented by main contractor Farrans, that carries construction traffic clean over the operational core of the site without ever entering an airside zone or interrupting baggage operations.

The structure itself is unremarkable to look at, which is rather the point. Its significance for the wider industry lies in what it represents rather than what it spans, namely a low-friction method of building around live infrastructure that avoids the permits, escorts and stop-start working that normally make airside construction so slow and so expensive. As airports across the United Kingdom push through capacity upgrades to meet recovering travel demand, the ability to keep an asset earning while it is rebuilt is becoming a commercial discipline in its own right, and temporary modular bridging is quietly emerging as one of its most useful tools.

Briefing

• A 60-metre Acrow 700XS modular steel bridge has been installed at Bristol Airport to carry construction traffic from landside to an elevated coach deck without entering airside areas.
• The structure was rented by Farrans, a Sisk Company, prebuilt in three sections of 21, 18 and 21 metres plus a 12-metre ramp, and craned into position within a four-hour lifting window.
• It holds a minimum 2.2-metre clearance over the airport’s sole baggage-drop access route, preserving 24-hour vehicle movements throughout the construction period.
• The works form part of Bristol Airport’s current multi-year upgrade toward its approved 12 million passenger cap, with a separate £500 million proposal to reach 15 million now before North Somerset Council.
• The deployment reflects a broader shift toward rented, reusable modular bridging as a way to de-risk construction logistics on busy transport assets.

Keeping the Airport Earning While It Is Rebuilt

The commercial logic of the installation becomes clear once the site constraints are understood. The works span an area that straddles both landside and airside, and the ground beneath the new bridge is the only access route for baggage drop operations, so any solution had to leave that corridor open at all hours. Rather than route construction vehicles through airside space, with the security escorts, permits and timing restrictions that this implies, the bridge lets them travel directly from landside, pass above the airside area without entering it, and climb to an elevated coach deck roughly three metres above ground level.

The arrangement has cut the need for special permits, shortened delivery times and helped to keep a lid on project costs, all of which matter on a programme where access delays compound quickly.

That operational continuity is the real prize for the contractor and the airport alike. A live terminal generates revenue every hour it stays open, and an access failure that grounded baggage handling would carry consequences far beyond the construction budget.

Laura Jones, Business Development Manager, UK at Acrow, framed the challenge in plain terms, noting: “Maintaining safe, efficient access during airport construction is always complex, particularly during busy times of the day with flights arriving and departing,” and adding: “The Acrow modular bridge has provided a practical solution that supports construction progress while keeping critical airport operations running smoothly.” For an operator weighing the cost of a rented structure against the risk of disruption to a working airport, that calculation tends to favour the bridge.

Engineering Around a Four-Hour Window

The technical interest lies in how much had to be accommodated within a small envelope. Built around Acrow’s 700XS panel system, the bridge runs to a total length of 60 metres across three spans, supported by four towers also supplied by Acrow, with a single-lane width of 4.2 metres and an epoxy anti-skid deck. It is rated for a design load of a single 44-tonne vehicle in accordance with CS454, the National Highways standard governing the assessment of highway structures, which means it can take the heaviest goods vehicles the construction programme is likely to send across it.

Holding a 2.2-metre clearance above the baggage route while lifting traffic up to a deck three metres above ground demanded careful geometry, since the structure had to clear what passed beneath it without breaching the height limits imposed above it.

Prefabrication did most of the heavy lifting, in both senses. Assembling the bridge into three sections off site allowed the team to compress on-site work into a single crane operation carried out within a strict four-hour lifting window, under a ceiling-height restriction that ruled out a more leisurely build.

That ability to drop a complex structure into a tightly policed slot is precisely what modular systems are built for, and Michael Treacy, CEO of Acrow Global Limited, pointed to the same flexibility when he said the company was: “proud to have been selected to be a part of this important infrastructure upgrade,” and that: “Acrow’s modular bridge solutions offer the versatility to be rapidly deployed, adapted to site-specific constraints, and configured for either permanent or temporary use across a wide range of applications.” On a constrained airport apron, that adaptability is not a marketing line so much as a basic entry requirement.

The Expansion Behind the Bridge

The bridge is a small component of a much larger story about Bristol’s growth ambitions. The present airport opened at Lulsgate in 1957, succeeding the earlier Whitchurch aerodrome that Bristol Corporation had developed from 1929, and it has expanded in fits and starts ever since to keep pace with a growing regional population. It is currently working through a multi-year upgrade aimed at delivering its approved cap of 12 million passengers a year, a programme that has already included a new public transport interchange and continues with terminal and airfield improvements of the kind the Acrow bridge now supports.

Around 10.8 million passengers presently use the airport, so the headroom to 12 million is being built out rather than merely planned.

Beyond that approved work sits a more contested proposition. In March 2026 the airport submitted plans to North Somerset Council for a roughly £500 million investment programme intended to lift the annual cap from 12 million to 15 million passengers by the late 2030s, with a larger terminal, runway and taxiway changes to handle bigger aircraft, highway upgrades on the A38 and the prospect of long-haul services to North America and the Middle East.

The proposal has drawn objections from local campaigners worried about road pressure and emissions, and a decision is expected later in the year, so the present construction should be read as delivery against the secured 12 million cap rather than as part of the still-pending 15 million scheme. For investors, the ownership backdrop is equally relevant, with Macquarie Asset Management having taken a 55 per cent stake in the airport in November 2025 alongside a group of institutional co-owners, a structure that signals continued appetite for regional airport infrastructure as a long-duration asset class.

Why Modular Bridging Is Moving From Emergency to Everyday

Acrow’s heritage is rooted in rapid and emergency deployment, with the company citing more than 75 years of service to the transport and construction industries and bridge projects in over 150 countries across Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe and the Middle East. The 700XS platform that underpins the Bristol job is the same family of bolt-together steel panels the firm sells for permanent crossings, military gap-bridging and disaster relief, which is exactly why it transfers so readily to a congested construction site. Components are designed to be transported flat, assembled without welding and, crucially, dismantled and reused once the job is done, so a temporary access structure does not become stranded capital at the end of a programme.

That reusability is reshaping how contractors think about construction logistics on brownfield and live-asset projects. Renting a modular bridge for the duration of the works, as Farrans has done here, converts what might otherwise be a bespoke civil-engineering exercise into an off-the-shelf, time-boxed service, with the structure returning to the supplier’s pool afterwards.

For asset owners under pressure to keep operations running and budgets contained, the appeal is obvious, and the model maps neatly onto the wider trend toward prefabrication and offsite manufacture across the sector. What was once reserved for floods, war zones and washed-out roads is increasingly being specified as a routine enabling work for planned construction.

What the Bristol Job Signals for Live-Asset Construction

The detail that should interest construction and infrastructure professionals is not the span length or the load rating but the working method behind them. Building over rather than through a live operation, compressing on-site disruption into a single short lift, and treating the access structure as a rented and returnable asset together describe a template that applies well beyond a single airport apron. The same logic suits railway estates, ports, hospitals and any other facility where the cost of stopping operations dwarfs the cost of the temporary works needed to avoid it.

For Bristol specifically, the bridge buys the wider expansion programme something valuable, which is the freedom to keep building while the larger questions about the airport’s future capacity are settled through the planning system. Whether or not the 15 million passenger proposal is approved, the discipline of delivering construction without grounding operations will remain. On that measure the modest steel structure now spanning the apron is doing more than carrying lorries, since it is demonstrating, in a way that contractors elsewhere will recognise, how to rebuild a working asset without first switching it off.

ULMA’s 400-Tonne Formwork Package Keeping São Paulo Bridge on Schedule

Cable-stayed bridges tend to earn their attention once the cables are strung and the deck is soaring, but the economics of building one are settled far earlier, in the temporary structures that shape the concrete, carry its weight and give crews safe access to it.

On the new cable-stayed crossing rising over the Jundiaí River in São Paulo state, that early phase has been handled by ULMA Construction, which supplied 400 tonnes of formwork, shoring and access equipment configured to the different demands of the job. The crossing is the centrepiece of the largest mobility programme in the municipality’s history, and the way its temporary works have been packaged says a good deal about where competition in the sector is heading.

For contractors and the public authorities that fund them, the interest here is less about the finished silhouette than about programme certainty. A single 43-metre pylon carrying the structure on both sides leaves little margin for improvisation, and the choice of temporary works determines how quickly the deck can be built, how much labour is exposed to work at height, and whether the schedule survives contact with the site.

ULMA’s involvement illustrates a wider shift in heavy civil works, where suppliers increasingly win business not on individual products but on integrated packages that pre-assemble complexity out of the critical path.

Briefing

• ULMA supplied 400 tonnes of formwork, shoring and access equipment for the Jundiaí cable-stayed bridge, the centrepiece of a roughly R$143 million (around £21 million) municipal mobility programme.
• The structure is carried by a single 43-metre central pylon, with both sides of the deck built simultaneously to compress the construction timetable.
• The MK System allowed truss structures to be pre-assembled at ground level and lifted into position in a single operation, reducing time spent working at height.
• Supporting equipment included COMAIN modular formwork, T-60 shoring towers, and BRIO scaffolding and stair towers, providing continuous access through three-metre concreting lifts.
• The contract extends ULMA’s long record of cable-stayed bridge work in Brazil, a market where integrated temporary-works supply is becoming the main point of differentiation.

The Temporary Works Package Behind The Schedule

The headline figure of 400 tonnes matters less as a measure of tonnage than as an indication of scope. Rather than supplying a single formwork line, ULMA assembled a combined package spanning the MK System, COMAIN modular formwork, T-60 shoring towers, and BRIO scaffolding and stair towers, each tuned to a specific phase of construction.

That breadth is where value now sits in the temporary-works trade. A crossing of this type moves through several distinct stages, from early concrete placement to access and finishing works, and a supplier able to cover all of them from one engineering office removes interfaces, reduces the risk of incompatible kit and gives the contractor a single point of technical accountability.

Eduardo Lucena, a production engineer at ULMA, framed the crossing within the broader scheme, noting that the works are improving Jundiaí’s urban infrastructure through three conventional bridges, a tunnel beneath the João Cereser highway and, as the city’s landmark, the cable-stayed bridge itself. He placed particular weight on the role of the MK System in the shoring, pointing to its strength relative to the small number of components required and to the pressure of meeting programme dates, which he said the approach helped to ease.

José Carlos Alves Nogueira, the general foreman on the cable-stayed bridge, was blunter about the commercial logic, describing the MK System as the element that made the project viable on cost and time because the structure could be built in full and launched in one go without compromising quality, safety or ease of handling.

Engineering The Central Pylon

The defining technical constraint is the geometry. A single 43-metre mast supporting the deck on both sides, with the two flanks raised together, demands a temporary structure that is both stiff enough to hold the loads and adaptable enough to follow the shape as it rises. This is where the MK System earned its place. Built as trusses with high load-bearing capacity, it can be configured to almost any span geometry, and on the Jundiaí crossing it was used alongside VMK vertical formwork and BMK climbing brackets to form the working assemblies around the pylon and the approaching deck sections.

The more consequential detail is the sequencing. Because the MK components allow structures to be pre-assembled before they are placed, crews could build sizeable truss assemblies at ground level and lift them into position complete, rather than piecing them together in the air. That single-lift approach trims crane cycles, shortens the time workers spend at height and protects the stability of partially built sections, all of which feed directly into the programme.

On a bridge where both sides are advancing at once, the ability to standardise and repeat pre-built assemblies is what keeps the two halves in step and the schedule intact.

Access, Safety And The Concreting Sequence

Access and safety are frequently treated as secondary to the structural systems, yet on a symmetrical cable-stayed build they are inseparable from productivity. ULMA supplied BRIO scaffolding to provide continuous access across the working levels, with stair towers ensuring that personnel could move smoothly through the three-metre concreting lifts that characterised the pour sequence.

The general foreman described the rhythm plainly, explaining that at each three-metre stage the stairs and climbing equipment advanced together with the shoring, so that access and structure rose as a single coordinated system rather than as separate trades chasing one another up the pylon.

The formwork and shoring behind those pours came from the same integrated package. COMAIN modular formwork handled the concrete faces, while T-60 shoring towers carried the loads through the initial placement phases, and the BRIO stairs kept circulation open for both crews and, at the relevant stages, pedestrians.

Continuity of this kind is what allows a contractor to hold quality and safety standards while still working at pace, and it is precisely the sort of coordinated detail that a fragmented, multi-supplier procurement tends to lose. ULMA’s specialist team supported the planning, assembly and structural control of the systems throughout, a service element that increasingly forms part of the commercial proposition rather than an afterthought to it.

Inside Jundiaí’s Largest Mobility Programme

The bridge does not stand alone, and its significance is best read against the scheme that contains it. The crossing forms part of the extension of Avenida Antônio Frederico Ozanan, described locally as the largest mobility project in Jundiaí’s history, and once complete it will link the Ozanan corridor with Avenida Luiz Latorre.

The wider works run for around five kilometres in both directions and take in four bridges, a tunnel beneath the João Cereser highway, roughly 900 metres of canalisation along the Jundiaí River, a landscaped linear park planted with thousands of native trees, and a cycleway. Total investment stands at approximately R$143 million, split between around R$100 million from the São Paulo state government and R$43 million in municipal funds.

That funding structure is as telling as the engineering. Co-financing between state and municipality, with the state carrying the larger share, is a common route to delivery for mid-sized Brazilian mobility schemes, and it shapes both the procurement timetable and the political visibility of the works. The Jundiaí project has drawn attention at state level, with the crossing positioned as a strategic connection and a civic landmark rather than a simple river bridge.

For suppliers and contractors watching the Brazilian pipeline, schemes of this scale, bundling roads, bridges, drainage and green infrastructure under a single programme, represent a steady and repeatable source of work that does not depend on the occasional headline megaproject.

ULMA’s Brazilian Foothold

For ULMA, a formwork and scaffolding cooperative headquartered in Oñati in the Spanish Basque Country, the Jundiaí contract reinforces a position built over successive Brazilian bridge projects. The company has previously supplied temporary works for high-profile cable-stayed crossings in the country, including the Estaiada bridge on Rio de Janeiro’s Metro Line 4 and the arch-shaped landmark connecting major avenues in São Paulo, as well as the cable-stayed section of the Via Mangue motorway in Recife. That accumulated reference base matters in a market where contractors are cautious about entrusting critical, safety-defining temporary works to unproven suppliers.

The competitive picture is instructive. Formwork and shoring is a concentrated global trade in which a handful of international engineering-led suppliers compete less on catalogue products than on the quality of project-specific design and site support. ULMA’s pitch on Jundiaí, an integrated package that pre-assembles complexity, standardises repeat lifts and folds access and safety into the structural sequence, is characteristic of how the sector is trying to move up the value chain.

As labour availability tightens and clients grow less tolerant of programme slippage, the argument for buying an engineered temporary-works system rather than assembling one from parts becomes harder for contractors to ignore.

What The Jundiaí Job Signals

The finished crossing will be judged on its span and its cables, but the more durable lesson for the industry lies in how it was built. The combination of pre-assembled truss structures, single-lift placement, simultaneous construction of both sides and an access system that climbs in lockstep with the pour points to a model of bridge delivery in which the temporary works are treated as programme insurance rather than a commodity. On a mid-sized municipal scheme, that discipline is what keeps a landmark structure on time and on budget.

For the wider Brazilian market, the project is a reminder that the meaningful competition among temporary-works suppliers is now fought on engineering and coordination rather than tonnage. Schemes such as the Ozanan extension, which knit together bridges, tunnels, drainage and public realm under a single funding envelope, will continue to generate demand for exactly this kind of integrated capability.

The suppliers best placed to capture it will be those that can demonstrate, as ULMA has here, that a well-designed temporary structure is not a cost to be minimised but a route to schedule certainty on the projects that municipalities most want to be seen delivering.