Special Projects Ambassador Award and Award of Excellence
Gordie Howe International Bridge Environmental Management Program AECOM
22
disciplines and provides a mechanism to manage and monitor all environmental works. It assures agencies, stakeholders and the public that WDBA will meet its environmental commitments throughout design and construction. AECOM’s environmental responsibilities for the project have included facilitating interagency and interdisciplinary consultation and co-ordination, securing permits and obtaining approvals from key federal,
CANADIAN CONSULTING ENGINEER
provincial, state, regional and local agencies. Multidisciplinary management Used during design and construction to mitigate environmental impacts and ensure regulatory compliance, the EMS involves monthly reporting to WDBA and discipline-specific management and monitoring plans that address site, project and regulatory details from several jurisdictions. An interdisciplinary environ-
mental management plan (EMP) provides the framework. The EMP includes customized checklists that were communicated to design leads early and monitored throughout the project for seamless integration and to minimize changes. Comprehensive constraint maps were developed for both countries to characterize environmental features. Environmental obligation matrices were created to ensure regulatory and project agreement commitments were incorporSeptember/October 2022
PHOTO COU RT E SY A ECOM
A
ECOM, as a member of Bridging North America (BNA) and working on behalf of the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority (WDBA) and the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), is lead designer for the $5.7-billion Gordie Howe International Bridge project. At 2.5 km long and with a main span of 853 m, the structure itself will be the longest cable-stayed bridge in North America and one of the largest in the world. Within the scope of its assignment, AECOM developed a cross-border environmental management system (EMS) to meet both Canadian and American regulatory requirements and integrate with the project’s quality, health, safety, security and sustainability systems. This is one of the first public-private partnership (P3) projects in Canada to achieve International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001:2015 certification. The program includes 40 environmental plans in 10
