Oooff. Bit of a plot twist with this one guys. Stephen Knox shares with us his experience in building this mammoth structure in Hong Kong.
The twist? In 2014, a temporary working platform collapsed during construction and almost took his life.
Despite sustaining significant injuries and enduring a long road to recovery… he still loves bridges.
Read on to learn about his time on the Hong Kong to Macau Bridge Project.
One of Stephen's first major bridges to be involved in within the construction side of his career was the HKZMB project in 2012 to 2014.
This was both career defining and life defining for Stephen.
The Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge (HZMB) is a 55-kilometre (34 mi) bridge–tunnel system consisting of a series of three cable-stayed bridges, an undersea tunnel, and four artificial islands.
It is both the longest sea crossing and the longest open-sea fixed link in the world. The HKLR09 section of the project delivered by VSL-Dragages-China Harbour JV. It consisted of approximately 9km of elevated viaduct from Chek Lap Kok airport to the first of two artificial manmade islands.
The structure was precast segmental balanced cantilever with spans up to 180m long. There were 5,600 segments and 115 spans.
Stephen whilst at VSL led a team during the enabling stages of the bridge superstructure work to procure, assemble and commission four sets of lifting frames to start off the precast segment lifting along with numerous other tasks.
These lifting frames were of different structural forms and capabilities with the biggest one designed to lift some of the biggest precast bridge segments ever done in the world. During the process he developed a set of friends amongst some of the most capable bridge construction professionals in the industry globally.
Unfortunately Stephen's time on the project was cut short due to a major accident where there was a bridge element collapse in which he sustained serious injuries and left him in ICU for three weeks before a lengthy recovery.
Over a period of some months and to this day, he still recovers from these injuries. This has taught him a valuable lesson about health and safety in the context of mega complex project construction and the associated risks when it can go wrong.
A once in a lifetime project with ups and downs for Stephen, but still ultimately a project and bridge we love due to the scale. They don't get much bigger than this.
