Photo: Stretto di Messina

COWI to design the world's largest bridge 

COWI is the main consultant in a consortium of leading international companies, who have just been awarded the contract to design the world's largest suspension bridge across the Strait of Messina.
The Danish civil engineering company, COWI, will take part in the design of the world's largest suspension bridge which will link mainland Italy with the island of Sicily. COWI is main consultant in an international consortium that has just been awarded the contract to design and build the world's largest suspension bridge. The client, Stretto di Messina, will make their final approval within 10 days.

The bridge across the Strait of Messina will have a span twice the size of the Great Belt suspension bridge; i.e. 3.300 m (Great Belt 1.624 m). COWI will be in charge of the design and the technical follow-up during construction. Total contractual value is approximately 30 billion DKK.

Great value

"The project is of great value to COWI. To be awarded this assignment is an international recognition which shows that we are one of the world's leading companies within bridge design," says COWI's bridge director, Anton Petersen.
Photo: Stretto di Messina


COWI is the main consultant in a consortium consisting of a number of the world's leading companies within construction. The consortium is lead by Impregilo S.p.a., the leading contractor in Italy. Other partners of the consortium are Condotte, Aci Consorzio Stabile, CMC, and Impresa Grassetto, all leading Italian contractors. Among the foreign partners are the Spanish company Sacyr Vallehermoso, and IHI from Japan.

The consortium scored very high technical points in the competition. According to Anton Petersen, this is the result of among other things COWI's ability to gather and further develop the large experience from both acting as client consultants and as consultants for contractors in connection with the large Danish bridge projects - especially the Great Belt bridge and the Øresund Link. Furthermore, COWI has drawn upon their North American export companies, Ben C. Gerwick Inc. and Buckland Taylor Ltd., for specialist knowledge on seismic design. Dissing+Weitling have acted as aesthetics consultants.

By Christina Tækker, cht@cowi.com  
Published: 14.10.2005

Worth knowing about the bridge 
The bridge is part of the development of southern Italy by expanding the infrastructure. The bridge will be designed with a life span of 200 years taking into account earthquakes and strong winds.

The bridge will be composed of three bridge girders. Normally, only one girder is used, and on few bridges, such as Stonecutters bridge in Hong Kong, two girders were used. Two of the roadway decks are for road traffic, while the central one is for the railway tracks. For aerodynamic stability reasons, the girders will be shaped with curved soffit similar to an aircraft wing. The bridge will have an extreme span that will be more than 50% longer than the present world record of 1990 m from Japan.

The main suspension cables consist of huge bundles of steel wires with a diameter of 5.33 mm. The total amount of steel wires to be used for the Messina bridge would be long enough to reach 20 times around the world.