Alumni Feature
BRIDGING GAPS
Spanning Engineering Horizons Andrew Twarek Leads Award-Winning Project Repainting Mackinac Bridge
Prize Project The Mackinac Bridge Paint Platforms project has earned the following awards: • 2020 Other Structures Outstanding Project Award National Council of Structural Engineers Association
• 2020 Honorable Conceptor Award
American Council of Engineering Companies/Michigan
• 2020 E. Crone Knoy Award
Society for Protective Coatings (Seaway Painting)
• 2019 Excellence in Structural Engineering, Best Neighboring State Project Award Structural Engineers Association of Illinois
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hen the Mackinac Bridge, the world’s fifthlongest suspension structure, needed sprucing up after more than 60 years connecting Michigan’s peninsulas, new and innovative engineering approaches were required to strip its two towers to bare metal for a fresh coat of paint. An elaborate, first-of-its-kind movable platform system designed by Ruby+Associates, fabricated by Moran Iron Works and used by Seaway Painting, allowed that massive job to be done efficiently, while also earning several structural engineering awards. This includes the Society of Protective Coatings’ E. Crone Knoy Award for outstanding achievement in industrial or commercial coatings. (The award was named for the deceased 1958 mechanical engineering alumnus.) Andrew Twarek, a 2005 civil engineering graduate, was the engineering team project manager for Ruby+Associates tasked with using state-of-the-art
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techniques and creative new products to solve problems that provide long-term service. “It’s not often that an engineer gets to work on such an iconic structure,” states Twarek about the bridge, with a suspended length that stretches 8,614 feet between anchorages and has a total length of approximately five miles. “Most projects are on firm ground, with straightforward loading. This project was 500 feet in the air above water, so the wind load was significantly higher (considering winds regularly exceeding 100 mph at the top of the towers). The combination of aluminum and steel with the hoists involved added another layer of complication to the design.” The Ruby team designed two different hanging platforms to allow for removal and collection of the original leadbased paint, and to repaint
Two different hanging platforms were designed to allow for removal and collection of the original lead-based paint, and to repaint the Mackinac Bridge's two towers.
