The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Bridge in New Ross wins the British Institution of Structural Engineers’ Best Road Bridge Award.

Established in 1968, the Structural Awards are the world’s leading awards for structural engineering excellence.

Carlos Fernández Casado S.L. is proud to receive this award and we would like to thank The Institution of Structural Enginners for it.

We would like to congratulate ARUP and our own team for the excellent work done and the important awards they are getting. In addition, the Bridge has been awarded this year with the IABSE Outstanding Structure of 2021 award.

The following are the jury’s comments on the project: “The 887 m long, nine-span, three-towered extradosed concrete bridge rises 36 m above river level to provide navigational space for New Ross Harbour. The structure is impressive in scale and slenderness. It holds multiple records, including the longest bridge in Ireland, the longest concrete extradosed spans in the world and, during construction, the world’s longest balanced cantilever for concrete deck extradosed bridges.

To reduce the materials required, high-strength concrete was used and precast panels were introduced in the cantilevers to minimize the cross-section weight. Long bridge life is ensured through the detailing and specification of materials and the use of structural health monitoring and maintenance systems.

State-of-the-art structural analysis tools, such as explicit time-dependent creep curves and step-by-step nonlinear iterative analysis, were used during the complex construction. The result is a highly optimized structural design and a relevant engineering work.”

Miguel Angel Astiz, CFC’s Chief Scientific Officer and CFC’s Director for the New Ross Bridge highlights the enormous satisfaction that the award brings to the entire team, for whom a slender and beautiful strong structure is one of the main objectives in all their designs.