Bridges & Marine Structures
Bridges and related marine structures provide critical connections across rivers, waterways and complex terrain, supporting safe, reliable transportation where land meets water. These systems include bridges, ramps, pedestrian bridges and supporting structures designed to perform in challenging hydraulic and environmental conditions.
Why Bridges & Marine Structures Matter
Bridges play a vital role in transportation networks, linking communities, spanning rivers and rail corridors, and supporting multimodal travel across urban and rural settings. As infrastructure ages, bridge systems must accommodate higher loads, evolving mobility needs and increasingly complex site constraints.
Where crossings occur over water, marine structures enable bridge construction and long-term performance in dynamic environments. Designing these systems as integrated components of the bridge is essential to maintaining safety, durability and reliability over time.
Why Burns & McDonnell
Our teams bring deep structural experience to bridge projects that require coordination across planning, engineering, environmental and construction disciplines. This includes long-span river crossings, multi-span bridges, pedestrian structures, ramps and grade separations, along with supporting structures designed for water-influenced environments.
Our design-build, progressive design-build and engineer-procure-construct (EPC) delivery models allow planning, design and construction to move forward in a coordinated manner, providing clear accountability and continuity throughout project execution. Experience across aviation and federal programs further strengthens our ability to deliver complex structures in constrained, highly regulated environments where safety, sequencing and constructability are critical.
Delivery Approaches That Support Complex Structures
Bridge projects in and around waterways often require careful coordination of temporary works, environmental considerations and complex construction sequencing. Integrated delivery approaches support early alignment of technical decisions, constructability and risk management, helping teams navigate challenging site conditions while maintaining project schedules.
By bringing in-house designers, builders and specialty disciplines together early, projects benefit from streamlined coordination and consistent execution from concept through construction. This approach supports efficiency and technical rigor for bridges and related structures built in complex environments.
Designing Structures for Long-Term Performance
Designing bridges in water-influenced settings requires a clear understanding of hydraulic behavior, geotechnical conditions, corrosion risks and long-term maintenance considerations. Supporting structures such as foundations, piers, retaining systems and shoreline stabilization elements are designed to perform alongside the bridge as a unified system. Our goal is to bring to life infrastructure that withstands environmental pressures and supports reliable movement of people and goods over decades of service.
