Berbice River Floating Bridge, Guyana

The Berbice River is wide and tidal at New Amsterdam. It also carries a lot of traffic, including large merchant vessels. The bridging solution therefore had to account for width, tidal rise and fall, and feature a mechanism for allowing both large and small river traffic to pass. It would also need to have the capacity to take heavy road traffic.
The floating pontoon bridge features 39 pontoons designed and manufactured by Bosch Rexroth, and a superstructure based on 37 spans of Compact 200 bridging from Mabey Bridge. The main challenge during installation was the anchorage for the pontoons due to poor ground conditions and tidal range. This was solved by using Suction Embedded Anchors.
The completed bridge is the sixth longest floating bridge in the world at 1,570m and provides a two lane crossing with anti-skid surfacing. Previously, crossing the river using the Berbice River Ferry Service consumed a great deal of time, crossing via the floating bridge now takes just 2 to 3 mins.