Before barging and lifting two halves of a 2,650-ton truss assembly for the superstructure of the $1.2 billion Huey P. Long Bridge widening, the contractor wanted to have a way to monitor how the steel was reacting to all of the jostling.
MTI, a joint venture of Massman Construction Co., Kansas City, Mo., Traylor Bros. Inc., Evansville, Ind. and IHI Inc., New York, NY, hired Applied Geomechanics Inc. San Francisco to develop a monitoring system that would keep the contractor apprised of stresses to the truss in real time.