Services

Major Damage

Florida Drawbridge has over nine years of experience managing incidents on drawbridges. Safety is the first and foremost concern. Our on-site bridge tenders are trained to assess the situation as it occurs and immediately secure the site from unsafe conditions. The second crucial factor is to respond on site with the appropriate personnel. Florida Drawbridge respond within 5 minutes and arrive on site fully prepared within 30 minutes, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including holidays.

Florida Drawbridge responsibility to keep the bridges operating safety at all times is of paramount importance. Through effective preventive maintenance and proper operations, down time is kept to a bare minimum. However, when malfunctions do occur, it is essential that repairs be immediately addressed and resolved. Malfunction response starts with training all bridge operators to immediately assess the situation and secure the bridge from further mishap. Immediately after the bridge is secure, malfunctions are reported and responded to within 30 minutes or less by Florida Drawbridge's maintenance personnel.

For example, on January 1st, at 2:00AM, the NW12th Street bridge output-shaft of the near motor broke in half. This caused the leaf to come down by gravity due to the fact that there were no machinery brakes on this bridge. Shortly after the New Year celebration and our crew leader responded on-site to access the damage and offered solutions before 4am in the morning. He had crews and a service truck working on the bridge in a matter of hours. Our personnel worked the holiday, day and night, to resolve the problem. Twelfth Street Bridge was back in operation by Saturday afternoon, well in advance of Monday morning business traffic.

Another typical example of Florida Drawbridge malfunction response was evident on Atlantic Avenue Bridge in Delray Beach. The north lock jammed in the newly installed cushion lock receiver and could not be extracted even with the aid of come-a-longs. Maintenance men responded to the site within half an hour. We found that the girder was actually bent causing the receiver to be miss-aligned by almost 1 inch. We immediately mobilized to the site a fully stocked service truck. Working day and night until the job was completed, our crew was able to extract the lock pin and straighten the girder using 500 tons of pull created from two 2” diameter 8’ long turn buckles fastened to custom made adapter plates. A series of custom made stainless steel radial shims were designed to complete the alignment. The shims were manufactured, delivered and installed within hours. The alignment was perfect the first time. After the emergency was over the root cause of the failure was determined that the “Lock pulled” limit had stuck making the relay logic believe it was okay to raise the bridge even though the lock was driven. The Florida Drawbridge engineer proposed modifications to the lock permissive circuit so that if “Pull” and “Driven” both were present, the bridge would not raise. The electricians modified the control circuit and tested the operation for the F-DOT. In addition, indicating lights were installed for both locks to give a visual indication for the operator and to assist in troubleshooting the locks. The bridge has worked smoothly without a single problem ever since, almost three years now.