Imported from Shanghai, mammoth structure helps launch work on approach roadThe state government’s plan to transform Mumbai into Shanghai just got a major boost that will now help the city’s first visible makeover project to finish faster.The Bandra-Worli Sea Link, which is inching towards completion, will now be helped by a mammoth steel structure called a ‘launching truss’ purchased from a municipal body of Shanghai province by the sea link’s contractor Hindustan Construction Company (HCC). According to D K Sharma, Chief Engineer of HCC, the truss was specially procured to complete the curve-section of the sea link that joins the Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan Road.This engineering masterpiece that took six weeks to assemble is currently sitting at the start of the Worli end of the sea link. The launching truss lifts pre-cast concrete segments weighing between 110 and 140 tonnes each, aligning eight spans of 30 metre each on the curve from the Worli side of the approach bridge before hydraulically crawling on its four steel legs to the next pier, the next span. “This is the third launching truss used for the construction of the sea link. This truss will enable us to work simultaneously on the main carriageway and the curve-section,” Sharma told Newsline.According to an HCC official, the 1200 tonne truss was procured for Rs 23 crore and will be start operation from December 27. “The truss, which is on the side Worli-end, will be shifted to the centre of the road and moved ahead from where the pre-cast segments begin by December 27,” Sharma said.Sharma also said that, segments are being fixed by another truss on the straight section, while the new truss will fix the segments from the Worli side, thus finishing the sea link earlier. “If the truss working in the carriageway was to complete this end too, it would have taken a lot of time,” Sharma explained. Though, the completion date of January 31, 2009, announced by the project’s nodal agency, Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), will certainly be surpassed. “We’re expected the work to be completed much faster which is why the truss was brought in. We expect the sea link to be opened by traffic by March-end,” said an MSRDC official on condition of anonymity. One of the recent hurdles the constructors face was by the local fishermen. “They didn’t allow us to construct for nearly four months.by that time the MSRDC was in talks with the representatives of Kolis,” a source said.
