The Key Bridge rebuild gets a new workspace — and a squishier deadline

The stage is set for the Francis Scott Key Bridge rebuild. Literally.

Crews have largely completed the installation of trestles — overwater, wooden platforms that jut over the Patapsco River — to use during the construction of the bridge. Some Maryland residents complain about the lack of visible progress, but state officials point to the trestles as an essential step in the rebuild.

From afar, they don’t look like much. But the two trestles, built directly next to the footprint of the future Key Bridge, will support cranes, trucks, other heavy machinery and foot traffic. Essentially, they provide the scaffolding for the rebuild and will give the bridge’s new contractor, to be hired next year, a turnkey construction site.

“This work platform is designed and enables the contractor to access the piers that are in the water without having to be in the water themselves,” Jim Harkness, the Maryland Transportation Authority’s chief engineer, said Wednesday during a tour of the worksite.

The state initially picked Kiewit, which completed the project’s first phase, as the rebuild contractor but switched gears when the firm’s projections were billions more than the state’s anticipated price tag of around $5 billion.

The state then divided the rebuild into four pieces. The most complex contract, constructing the overwater portion, will be awarded next year.

Shortly after a container ship crashed into the span in 2024, killing six construction workers, the state pegged 2028 as the rebuild’s completion date. It later updated the project timeline to 2030. That remains the goal, even though pivoting from Kiewit could slow progress.

A formal document seeking potential builders, however, seems to leave the door open to a later date.

In its request to builders for the overwater portion, the state is seeking completion “as near to December 31, 2030 as practicable.” That language is a little more flexible than the official request in 2024, when the state asked a potential builder to complete the project “no later than October 15, 2028.”

By segmenting the rebuild and soliciting new contractors, the state is hoping it will introduce competition to the project, keeping the cost as low and timeline as short as possible.

“We still have a goal of the end of 2030,” Harkness said. “Ultimately, we need those proposals to tell us what they can build.”

The confidential procurement process has begun. The first deadline was last week, when interested builders submitted their qualifications to the state, kicking off a lengthy application process.

In October, the state will identify three candidates. By June, according to the formal request for qualifications, a contractor will be hired.

Meanwhile, Kiewit is continuing construction. In addition to building the trestles, crews are installing hundreds of steel piles — massive rods that are 8 feet in diameter — to form the span’s foundation.

Those piles arrive from Texas on barges. They are stored next to Tradepoint Atlantic at Sparrows Point. Eventually, over 1,000 piles will be hammered into the seabed.

Huge cranes, larger than any on the East Coast, slowly lower the piles into the water and then slide them more than 50 feet into the riverbed, which has the consistency of oatmeal. Then a massive hammer pounds the 180-ton piles into bedrock.

The piles are up to 230 feet tall, but that isn’t always enough. Crews sometimes have to weld more steel onto the pile to lengthen it a few dozen feet.

Mike Baker, who works for infrastructure company AECOM but is contracted by the state, characterized the piles as an integral step before building the bridge.

“If you’re building your new house, you don’t start with a deck,” he said. “You build the house first.”