Sabha Khola - Steel Bridge Construction

Following Kalika Construction's amazing success building the Piluwa Khola bridge in Easter Nepal, the local Khatmandu company was selected by UKAID (under the guidance of Engineer Tim Stiff of IMC Worldwide) to build two even bigger and more important bridges.

These were to be 2-lane highway bridges, to British Standards, spanning 120m over fast flowing rivers. These were over the Sabha Khola and Arun Khola rivers.

The roads on one side of these bridges are currently near impassable tracks; on the far sides roads are currently virtually non-existent. The UKAID will enable enormous cut-off areas to be accessed. (0035)

Reidsteel designed both of these to be erected without access into the river, because the Arun river was too fast and too deep to do anything else.

However the contractor chose to build the Sabha Khola bridge first; and because this river was more seasonal, to build it on supports instead of cantilever launching.

He built a series of gabions and on these locally produced steel trestles. On these the lower chords were erected and braced. Then the intermediate chord, with the bracing and anti-collision steel, was added.

The construction took less than a year, when the normal time for a bridge construction in Nepal is 5 years. This is the biggest clear span bridge in the whole of Nepal.

When you arrive bouncing along the 50 miles or so of rutted track, the sight of the bridge is astonishing.

The bridge was designed by Peter Mrozinski and drawn by Kevin Williams; and Nick Bartlett helped with the supervision.

The next bridge across the Arun Khola is already underway.