The Boyne Valley Bridge at the entrance/exit to Co Louth on the M1 motorway has been named as one of the 80 most iconic construction projects of the last 80 years.
The list was published in the latest issue of Construction Magazine, Ireland’s leading publication for the construction industry.
It was developed to mark the 80th anniversary of the Construction Industry Federation (CIF), which was founded in 1935.
Renamed the mary McAleese Boyne Valley Bridge in June 2013 in honour of the former Irish president, the cable bridge spans the Boyne River and sits on the county boundary of Meath and Louth.
The bridge was built from May 2000 to early 2003 at a cost of €35 million and was designed by Roughan and O’Donovan, who were awarded the ACEI Presidential Award in 2005 for the design.
It opened on June 9th 2003 and was the longest cable-stayed bridge in Ireland until October 2009 when the River Suir Bridge opened on the N25.
The bridge is managed under a public-private partnership between the National Roads Authority on behalf of the Irish Government and a private company, Celtic Roads Group. The concession company has an obligation to maintain the road for 30 years.
The bridge and motorway are tolled in both directions to finance its construction and maintenance.
In 2006, the Bridge was awarded the Excellence Award (Civil) from the Association of Consulting Engineers of Ireland
The bridge is 352.5m in length and 34.5m wide. It is 95m high and has a longest span of 170m, with six spans in total.
Projects were chosen for the iconic list in Construction Magazine which were innovative, iconic, award winning, the first of their kind or infrastructurally critical. Projects from each of the last eight decades are included on the list.
Speaking about the list, Construction Magazine Editor Brian Foley said, “This list celebrates some of the really great construction projects that have been undertaken in this country over the last 80 years. In recent times there has been a lot of criticism aimed at the construction sector, particularly around certain badly built or poorly conceived projects which have given the industry a bad name. However as the projects in this list show, the construction industry plays a vital role in the economy and Irish society. It has contributed a lot to Irish life and some of these projects play an extremely important and positive role in the State.”
Check out the list here.
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