Phu My Bridge

Phu My Bridge is the first cable-stayed bridge to be constructed in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. It forms a link to the outer ring road connecting southern Vietnam to the north.

At 2km-long, the bridge will cross the Saigon River, connecting districts 7 and 2 in Ho Chi Minh City. The bridge will ease traffic problems and will link to national highway No.1.

Contractors

In 2005, an open bid joint contact to construct the bridge and approach structures was awarded to Germany’s Bilfinger Berger and its Australian unit Baulderstone Hornibrooke for $104m. The project exceeded expectations and reached $150m. Phu My Bridge Corporation (PMC) is the client of the project. Construction work commenced in 2007 and was completed in 2009.

The contract to construct the main span of the bridge was awarded to Om Engineering.

Project

After Baulderstone and Bilfinger Berger’s successful construction of the My Thuan Bridge, PMC approached them to bid for the Phu My Bridge project.

The bridge is 1,946m long with a 27.5m-wide main deck. The bridge has a vertical clearance of 45m. It has four lanes on each side: two car and truck lanes, one motorcycle lane and one for pedestrians.

The pylons of the main bridge are supported on 28 large bored piles about 75m long and 2.1m in diameter. These pylons area designed in H profile about 140m high. The weight of the road platform is transferred from the tensioned cables tied to the deck to the main towers and to the piled foundations.

PMC is a private consortium consisting of Hanoi Construction Company, Investco, Cienco 620, Thanh Danh Co, and CII. Once the bridge is operational, PMC, under a BOT licence, will collect tolls for 26 years.

Baulderstone managing director Rick Turchini said: “Baulderstone is extremely proud of the contribution we have been able to make to the infrastructure and economy of Vietnam, through our involvement with the construction of the Phu My Bridge.”

Design

Engineering firm Arcadis designed the bridge and construction was done in partnership with Freyssinet International and Vietnamese company CC620. Cardno MBK, an infrastructure consultancy, designed the approaches of the bridge.

The main deck of the bridge is a reinforced concrete slab receiving support from longitudinal and transverse beams and suspended by stay cables from the pylons. Using formwork travellers, the deck is constructed in balanced cantilever fashion while the stay cable installations proceed along with the casting of the deck.

Financing

The project was financed by Societe Generale, combining various commercial and export credit loans. The export credit loans are from Germany, France and Australia. The terms include that half of the contract expenditure should be from these countries.