The Bartholomew County Commissioners have agreed to a contract with Force Construction to replace a bridge north of St. Louis Crossing.
The bridge on County Road 300E carries traffic over the Sydney Branch of the Flatrock River. The county will pay Force $638,531 to replace the bridge.
The proposal from Force Construction was about $26,000 less than one submitted by Duncan Robertson Inc. of Franklin — and more than $72,000 less than the bid from Milestone Contractors, Inc. of Columbus.
This is the second bridge in a month the commissioners have to replace in what they are attributing to poor workmanship on the structures.
In the Sydney Branch bridge case, the beams were too short and unwisely placed over a legal drain, Bartholomew County Highway engineer Danny Hollander said. The bridge eventually had to be closed, because the approach kept sliding into the creek, Hollander said.
A month ago, the commissioners approved replacing another bridge along County Road 900E, a mile east of State Road 9. A number of inadequacies were discovered last year after a wing wall collapsed near the edge of the bridge, wiping out about 5 feet of the county road. Since then, the bridge has only been able to carry one lane of traffic, the highway engineer said.
“It looks like that bridge had been moved there from a previous location,” Hollander said in regard to the 51-year-old structure near the Shelby County line. “The beams never did fit the span.”
On April 15, the commissioners agreed to pay Duncan Robertson a total of $693,017 to replace that entire structure.
