Valuable bridges : cable-stayed bridges and value engineering in American civil engineering culture, 1969-1979

Abstract

A history and theory of cable-stayed bridges in the context of a cultural discourse on civil construction projects' value, this thesis studies the significance of cable-stayed bridge designs to 'value engineering' objectives for major highway bridge projects of the 1970s. This study of preliminary designs and feasibility studies for highway bridges presents the alternate bridge designs versus alternative bridge typologies selected during this period as one instance of American civil engineering culture adapting to major bridge projects the economically measured but industrial approach to choosing, reconfiguring and eliminating construction systems of value engineering. Only as analytical mechanisms of bridge construction that figure as economically competitive in prevailing market conditions do the high-capital and technologically innovative bridge designs of the Luling Bridge (LA, 1978) and the Pasco-Kennewick Bridge (WA, 1977) develop into physical constructions built almost exclusively with federal highway funds. This shift in cable-stayed bridge designs' fate from abandoned projects in the 1960s is discussed as the reflection of structural engineers' engaging in the post-capitalist practices of analytical and then physical systems building, decision analysis, speculation as well as the interdisciplinary cultures from which these concepts stem. Critical studies of preliminary designs and construction industry data circa 1970 reveal cable-stayed bridge type selections to be at once the linchpin to politicization of VE in American highway bridge building by 1979 and the Achilles heel of an American civil engineering culture that sought a renaissance in bridge engineering not a redefinition of its principles through a new method of planning for alternate futures.