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The humble man and a bridge

by  Sazmac

Posted: Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Word Count: 661
Summary: There are many ways and languages to describe a bridge...




The humble man
wanted a bridge.

The Architect
Visioned:
A beautiful bridge of light and energy,
a shimmering statement of beauty.
A seamless white line
that flowed and streamed,
a landmark project,
an iconic structure,
to encast him forever in the landscape.


The Urban designer
designed an arc with the
principles of cable stayed compression, suspended;
a curved ramp sweeping elliptically to link two communities
on either side of the river. And in doing so;
created a catalyst for regeneration
that would enrich the whole,
the commercial
the residential
the industrial
the presidential
the visiting communities
the visiting dignitaries.
Rattling their chains and waving to their public
For the power and the glory and the good,
For the design and management of the streetscape…

The highwayman
Offered him:
An active response to across the board project issues, with
multi-discipline skills across all relevant fields.
And of course there would be innovative design and construction tangentially with
optimisation of whole life economics, notwithstanding the aforementioned
architectural and design excellence, of course the
leading-edge expertise in safety
through a thorough understanding of risk and value management
and a myriad wealth of technical expertise, with
proven successful delivery, time after time
and of course a bridge on time on budget on plan
with the biggest buck for the bang…..

The railwayman
Offered:
To maximise the service benefits available to his customers,
network providers and operators,
depending on the integrity of their infrastructure.
Underlying the required dynamic network
are underpinned by specialist designed structures
that support a range of infrastructure elements, and
serve a variety of stakeholders.
He said that structure must provide a robust context,
responding to;
a variety of technical,
regulatory and
aesthetic demands (to placate the architect),
- as long as the parapet design could withstand;
a full impact risk scenario.
In summary he said,
it must of course produce a safe,
functional and attractive system.
And obviously a bridge

The programme managers wanted to apply
leading-edge techniques to the programme management environment.
The benefits would include;
increased visibility;
hierarchical mastery;
and control of all programmes, projects, personnel and paper clips.
Tasks and key issues,
dilemmas and risks will be matched and sorted,
with skills and resources with optimisation, and,
a clear structured framework within which to manage
organisational change and impact.
They organised an approach
to the streaming and prioritisation of the projects,
reducing duplication and wasted effort.
With just the one bridge.


The network man
provided the strategy and scoping work to define current and future IS service requirements for services shared by the transportcompany and the Infrastructurecompanies that would be subject to procurement from IS service providers. As part of the integration with Transport for Bridges, the scope of the project subsequently expanded to include the common ICT services that could be shared across the other TfB modes. The networkman supported the PE and ICT, including preparing material for DD and managing the take up of customer references.


The Batman

Was worried that he needed to protect his roost site during the bridge work;
for as we know, there are 16 species of bat, all protected
under the law!
Daubenton's bats,
Roosting for maternity in the abutment on the eastern side of the river.
in the deck joint situated
immediately below the central reservation in the split carrriageway.
And how they clung on.
A license was needed from the men in suits to oust the roost.
Poor bats.
Temporary accommodation for the bats was provided by erected bat boxes
made from a mixture of concrete and sawdust
on the sides of the bridge away from the work areas.
Poor bats.
The bat man pronounced that ecological issues now form a
considerable and
unavoidable part of any major project
and, as such,
early planning is vital to deliver schemes on programme and within budget.
And without Bats.
Poor bats.


The Humble man
Wanted a bridge
From A to B
For his bike.
A very shiny carbon bike.
That was all.