All language subtitles for M.B.E38.ENG

It's been years in the making...

costing over six
billion dollars...

Unlike any construction
job ever done before...

San Francisco's new Bay Bridge...

It spans across
a seismic zone...

but even the world's strongest
earthquakes won't wreck this baby...

In case of an earthquake...

I would certainly want to be
on the top of this tower.

It certainly would
be the safest place to be.

But the Bay Bridge
isn't finished yet...

it's late and overbudget...

and the crews are racing to get
it up, before next big one hits...

This is the day that a lot of us
have been waiting, waiting for.

One last piece needs to fit perfectly

before bridge construction can
enter the home stretch...

This is probably the hardest. Most
difficult, most challenging project I HAVE BEEN ON

This one last huge girder needs to
be lifted from down here... to up there,

into a gap that's barely wide
enough for it to fit.

There is literally
no room for error...

There's no second chances.

The Bay Bridge, connecting
San Francisco to Oakland.

It was a marvel when they
built it the first time, in 1936.

Three hundred thousand
cars cross here everyday.

It is one of the busiest
bridges in the United States.

Except for one day in 1989...

The Loma Prieta earthquake
savaged San Francisco.

And the Bay Bridge
didn't escape carnage.

The upper deck of the
eastern span collapsed.

People were killed.

And the citizens of the Bay Area knew
that something drastic needed to be done

before another earthquake
took the whole thing down...

So the Bay Bridge
is being reborn,

earthquake proof and better than ever...

The 13 kilometre bridge
starts in San Francisco...

the old original
western suspension span

has been retrofitted to deal
with seismic activity...

But the real engineering challenge
has been rebuilding the eastern end,

past the midway point at Yerba
Buena Island. When it's done

the project will sport the world's most
impressive SelfAnchored Suspension Bridge,

attached to the Skyway,
running east down into Oakland.

The last time MegaBuilders was here it was 2006

and an army of workers was dredging out
the floor of the bay

and laying in the earthquake
proof pilings for the Skyway...

Five years later and
it looks like this...

the Skyway is complete and the tower is up
on the Self لاAnchored Suspension bridge...

the SAS.

The SAS deck is made up
of 28 massive box girders

14 for eastbound traffic
and 14 for westbound.

When the new bridge is complete,
the old one will be torn down.

The new components have
all been lifted individually

by a superpowerful
Shear Leg Crane.

Almost all of the
girders are in place.

Almost...
See that gap?

It's waiting for the last piece of the
puzzle. Nothing else can be done on the bridge

until that space is filled
by an enormous new girder.

She's gonna be centering up
here pretty soon.

He's taking the load
so we should be pretty good.

One of the key men for this
manoeuvre will be Mike Green.

I'm the marine superintendant
on the project here.

In charge of all the floatin equipment.

The boats. Crew boats, barges,

anything that has to be
moved on the water.

Mike has worked on huge projects
all over the world.

He oversaw the 27 other girder
lifts here on the SAS deck so far.

But he thinks this last
one will be the trickiest...

Well, it's gonna be the
last one. It's a tighter fit.

We don't have the extra
room to play with.

On the others you could be off,
two or three metres...

and it wouldn't be a problem. Because then
once you get in close you could swing into it.

This one here, you're going to
only have a metre to play with.

Everybody here is professional and they're used to it.

It's just a little extra pressure.

That's the girder there

952 tonnes and 20metres long.

Mike needs to barge
it out to the crane...

and then deftly sling it into what
looks like a generous amount of space...

but it won't be, once
the girder arrives.

- Is the pressure good on 14E?
- pressure good.

Adam Roebuck is part of
a young core of engineers

who are overseeing he different
phases of bridge construction...

the noise you hear? They're hammering
pins to make that initial connection.

As well as that
rattle that you hear?

They're, they're torquing the bolts,
or untorquing the bolts on these lugs.

All that torguing and untorquing
and hammering

is preparation for that last box girder.

This operation should've
happened already,

but the crews are behind...

because this girder was late
arriving from its factory in Shanghai.

Each one of these steel sections
was fabricated over in China,

they fit up a series of them
together to make sure they fit

they were then put on a ship, transferred
over. Unloaded back at the pier.

We unloaded them onto barges, using a
Shearleg crane which is right behind us.

Has the capacity of seventeen
hundred and fifty metric tons...

it, is the biggest crane on the West Coast.

The final girder is
officially called OBG 14 W.

OBG stands for
Orthotropic Box Girder.

14 because it is the 14th girder
in the sequence.

W because it will connect the western roadway
of the Suspension bridge to the skyway.

In a few years commuters
driving across this bridge,

heading into San Francisco,
will go right over OBG 14 W.

But not yet...

For now they use
the old 1936 Bay Bridge span

the same one damaged
and repaired in 1989.

It has continued to carry
the daily load of traffic

while the new bridge is being
built. And speaking of the new bridge,

the showpiece section will be
the Self Anchored Suspension span

that will literally hold itself up.

It can't do that yet

not until that last OBG goes in

and the crews start
stringing cable.

So it needs to rest on
a support structure

that rusty looking latticework,

20,000 tons of steel
bolted together

but only temporarily.

One the SAS is complete,

all of those oxidized girders
get torn down and recycled.

That's called a temporary truss.
It's the only project I've been on

where you have to build a bridge
to build a bridge.

It's all temporary. There was a lot of
work that went into all the temporary work.

The temporary trusses alone are
about twenty thousand tons of steel.

It's holding up the new bridge
until we get the cable strong

and once the cable is strong and tight, and
then it'll lift off of the temporary structure.

That's something that's a little bit unique

about a ىself anchored suspension bridge.
Which is what this is.

Erection sequence typically goes;
You erect the towers, you erect the cable

with the suspenders and then lift the roadway
deck sections into place using suspenders...

With the SAS we had to
kind of build it in reverse.

If you want to see a perfect
example of a typical suspension bridge,

look no further than a few miles west...

to the iconic Golden Gate Bridge...

The Golden Gate's two towers

are held in place by
massive steel cables

that are anchored into the rock
on land at either end of the span.

The anchored towers hold up
the whole structure.

The new Self Anchored Suspension
Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland

will be exactly the opposite.

One enormous 1.3 kilometre long steel cable

will embrace the bridge,
wrapped from one end to the other,

over the tower and back again. The
cables aren't anchored into the ground

they're anchored to the body of the bridge.

This suspension bridge
will hold itself up.

The design was the brainchild
of lead engineer Marwan Nader.

He wanted the bridge
to be a work of art,

but it also had to be indestructible.

For Marwan, the key
innovation was the single cable...

The cable itself is supported
on the tower at the very top

and comes down and anchors
into the box girder right behind me.

And puts the decking compression
and it becomes a statically stable system.

What this does is give the SAS the flexibility

to buck and bend in an earthquake.

The tower behind me,
is not a single tower.

It's actually four shafts. It's
split into four vertical shafts

that are interconnected
with shieldings.

Those links are specifically designed
so that they would deform and shear

and remain capable of
carrying the load...

Well, in case of an earthquake,

I would certainly wanna be
on the top of this tower.

It certainly would
be the safest place to be.

But for now the entire SAS is
still resting on its temporary truss

and nothing can
proceed with threading

the allimportant cable
around and over the bridge

until that last girderOBG 14 W

is lifted into place.

It's going to take precision timing and
all the skill this crack crew can muster.

There is barely enough room
to manoeuvre that girder.

It's going to be a tight fit.

The sleek and massive new Bay Bridge

between San Francisco and
Oakland is taking shape

four years late and four
billion dollars over budget.

But the crews are pouring it on
to try and make up for lost time...

and finish the bridge
beforeanother deadly earthquake hits.

But nothing can
proceed on the bridge

until this one last girder
is lifted into place.

The Skyway section of the bridge
has been complete for a while now.

When the girder they call
OBG 14 W is jacked into its spot,

the Self Anchored Suspension Bridge
and the Skyway will be finally connected.

When they built the
original bridge in the 30s

it was as much an
engineering marvel in its day

as the new one is in ours...

Back then, in order to
withstand earthquakes,

engineers sunk Douglas Fir
pilings into the muck of the bay.

But because the bottom
of the bay is soft and gooey,

work crews had trouble driving
the trees down very deep.

The same thing happened the last
time MegaBuilders was here, in 2006...

the muck was intractable...

nearly impossible to handle.

It was exasperating for
Canadian Petr Nademlejnsky.

Get a couple shovels,
start cleaning up

a lot of mud getting on this
box. Probably start cleaning up?

Back then he was
in charge of dredging,

the youngest chief engineer on site.

And the mud was not cooperating.

Petr's lack of progress was
holding up all of the other work

that needed to be
done down the line...

It was very frustrating...

You make money the faster
you get a piling dug out

and if it takes you four times
as long to dig one piling,

it cost you four times as much.

Like everything
else on the new Bay Bridge,

the pilings need to be able to withstand the
strongest earthquake. Mother Nature can inflict,

so the designers opted
to angle the piles,

like the legs of a giant
seismicproof stool.

It's a nice idea on paper,

but in reality the construction
effort was massive...

machines and mud and water,

a finicky mix that required patience,
finesse and innovation to figure out.

The hollow pilings
of the new Skyway

were driven down through
the muck into the bedrock

with giant, thunderous
pile drivers.

Then it was Petr's job to
dredge the goo out of the pilings,

to make room for the towers of rebar
that would be lowered into the shafts,

followed by tonnes and
tonnes of concrete...

Getting out that goo meant
lowering the clamshell dredging bucket

over and over again
into the newly driven piles,

and slogging out the sludge.

Every time the dredge
cable went taut,

Petr could only hope his bucket
had found some purchase.

So hopefully this is
another full bucket.

Real nice load.
Excellent, excellent.

When the bucket
came up loaded with mud,

Petr knew he was
finally making progress.

Even so, he still had plenty of
loads that came up almost empty.

I gotta admit, this is
probably the hardest,

most difficult, most challenging
project I've ever been on...

So as we're grabbin it, we're
lettin the water drain out,

and trying to keep the silt and the consistency
of the mud basically within the bucket.

Cause a before we were doing
that everything was just washing out

and you just scooped up a muddy,

basically a chocolate milktype
consistency of water.

And nuthin' would go into your bucket.

Once the muck
was finally cleared,

Petr and his crew had to get
the sea water out of the pilings.

They were forced to
think on the fly

to create a solution before the
dredging became a major drag

on all the other construction operations.

So Petr called in an airlift...

Everything you see down
there is the matter

of about 100 trials of trial and error and
this is the best product we've come up with.

We'd stick a big pipe. I think
it was about a ten inch pipe,

down into the piling
and induce air into the bottom.

And it would just form a
suction at the bottom of the pipe

and suck basically everything
that was in the piling.

Including all the silted water,
throughout the column

and it would pump it up and

and dispose it within
the foundation box

and the locking fill and then the sediment
would just settle within the locking fill.

At the beginning of this job, I didn't
realize what I was gettin myself into...

Bein' out there and realizing that
you're building something that'll

help keep the bridge up

when a big earthquake hits,

you're standing out there hoping that it
doesn't hit until you get the thing constructed.

Hot on Petr's heels was always the rebar crew...

and the rebar might just be the most
important material on the bay Bridge...

because it's everywhere...

Towers of rebar were used as skeletons for
building the foundation of this bridge.

Underneath all of
the concrete here

are hundreds of kilometres
of rebar just like this.

Since the beginning of the Bay
Bridge construction project

the rebar has been the job of this guy,

superintendent Warren Moldovan.

I've been on this
project since 2003.

When I drive home every night,

or come to work,
I see what we've done,

and it's amazing because we
haven't done this before, here.

And it's amazing to see what
a truly starting to look like

after all the frustration, aggravation,

and changing of everything we do
to make it happen.

To see what we've really done.
what we can acomplich

Warren crow is known as the Bay Bridge Rod Busters.

For the Skyway, they built
160 of these rebar towers,

only to see their handiwork get sunk
down a pipe and covered with concrete.

Each one had to be lowered
into pilings

and Warren had to be able to guarantee
that every one of his rebar towers

would hang together for the process.

Believe it or not,

every join on this cage was done by
hand and then inspected by Warren,

to make sure the job
was done to perfection...

Look in each column.

Make sure every bar is
tied to the columns.

All the hairpins are tied, and
the door opening is the right size.

You know, everything's unique so you can't go
into with attitude, you're just gonna make a tie,

and place it and place a piece of
rebar here. Because that may not work.

Alright so everything
changes every day.

Everything changes. Somethin
doesn't work, tieins to this don't work,

and it's aa group effort.

What'd you guys
what'd you guys do, Lance?

You put the wrong bars on the bottom.

Come over this way.

This giant jungle gym
slides into an empty piling

to help reinforce what would
become the base of the bridge.

It took 10 kilometres of iron rod
to build just one of these things...

The tolerances on this job are
probably the most critical tolerances

on any job that I've ever worked on.

So we have to make sure we
put everything in exact location.

Once the rebar was in place

the cement mixers were barged out
to dump their loads down the shafts.

All that rebar is coated with epoxy
to protect it from the salty seawater

that will eventually leach
through the concrete.

Every little detail
had to be considered.

Warren's creations had to be strong enough
to reinforce the concrete in the foundations,

but flexible enough to roll with
the punches of an earthquake.

Well, I would say this
project right here for me?

And for anybody
that's on this job.

Cause I do have guys that
have been here as long as me.

That still work on my crew.

It's somethin' everybody's
gonna be talkin about,

probably the rest of their career.

Today the Skyway
is all in place from Oakland,

across the pilings to
the very edge of the SAS.

These crews are getting ready
to make one last final attachment

between the two
monumental sections...

but it won't be easy.

This whole job in an exercise in
extreme precision on a monster scale.

No one has ever built
anything like this before,

in a place so prone to earthquakes.

Now's the time...

Everyone here has to be
on the same page...

for this bridge to work.

_

In five years. Bay Bridge
construction has grown from this,

a series of pilings
driven into the bedrock,

to this An almost complete concrete
and steel ribbon of roadway

connecting San
Francisco to Oakland

across the San Francisco Bay.

But that doesn't mean cars will be
traveling across here any time soon.

That is a few years away.

The bridge still needs to be made
secure by wrapping a suspension cable

from way down there
to way up here.

The whole idea at
the centre of the SAS

is the effectiveness of the tower...

it is the lynchpin
for suspension,

like the single mast of a sail boat

built to withstand the stress of
weather and lines reefed tight.

Over the last several months

the key job on the bridge has been
hoisting all the girders of the SAS deck

into place on the temporary truss.
When the bridge is complete

and the cable embracing
the suspension bridge is pulled tight,

it will be the tower
taking the weight.

There was a good deal of heavy lifting that went
into hoisting up the four pillars of the tower...

and a whole lot of
careful planning.

The tower isn't just designed to
work... it also has to look good...

Any bridge that we looked at, had to
satisfy the seismic performance criteria.

What came after that, at the time
when the bridge was being selected,

it came the aesthetics.

I would say the cost of the bridge

took a little bit of a backseat during
that period. It was a dot com time,

everybody was feeling good,

and while this bridge behind me
was going to cost a little more,

the idea was that we want
and a bridge that is unique,

that people can look
at in a postcard

and identify that this is the Bay Area.

Some people might quibble that the bridge
only cost a little more than planned,

but no one would argue that it
isn't an incredible bit on engineering.

Remember it will be a single cable
carrying the load of the suspension bridge.

Its path will follow
those orange catwalks...

Those catwalks mark the trajectory
of where the cable will be threaded.

If you have vertigo,
do not apply to work up here.

In a self anchored suspension bridge
the cables are anchored in the deck.

What you see behind me is what

the cables are going to the look like.

what The orange catwalk there
is the false platform

that's going to be used
to erect the cable.

Well the cable
starts on this side.

And basically goes up all
the way to the tower.

Goes through the left side
of the saddle and comes down

and goes to the west pier
where it loops around,

like a belt around your waist.

And it comes back up, all the way to the
tower, goes into the right side of the saddle

and comes down and
anchors on this side.

The cable itself, will ultimately be
carrying the bridge through the suspenders.

And the cables
anchor into the deck.

And the deck will take that tension that
is in the cable, and put it in compression.

But the cable work can't start
until that last gap is filled

by or Orthotropic Box
Girder number 14 W.

And that will happen down there,

where the Skyway meets the SAS,

where the massive shear
leg crane is waiting

it's affectionately known
as the Left Coast Lifter,

because it is the biggest
crane on the west coast.

Each pair of OBGs, is wedded
together by crossbeams like this one.

The crew is making sure it's secure
and ready to be bolted to OBG 14 W.

It's amazing how, with all
the technology of the 21st century,

so much construction still relies on
good oldfashioned brute strength and grit.

But don't be fooled.

The bridge is packed with
hightech, anti seismic surprises...

Eric Blue knows this

he's another one of the young
engineers on this project,

who's installing the earthquakeproof connector
beams linked through the guts of the bridge...

Those are the hinge A pipe beams.

They're trussed back into
the skyway right now...

And it's a sliding bearing in the skyway
span. So during a seismic event the pipe

the bridge will actually
slide along those pipes.

The Hinge APipe Beams
will work like this:

The bridge is designed with a fair bit of
movement in mind.

If there is an earthquake the
OBGs can slide back and forth

or jostle up and down
without breaking,

because these pipe beams
take the brunt of the energy.

So during a seismic event, the pipebeams
are anchored to the suspension span.

It's a sliding bearing
in the skyway span.

And during that event a seismic event,

the bridges will move along
those pipebeams, like this...

If the shaking
gets to be too much,

there is a core built into these
beams that will break if necessary.

Easier to fix a broken
beam than an entire bridge.

A fuse which is specifically designed
in a case of an overload,

to dissipate the energy and limit the
force and deform

and allow the bridges to basically be open
to traffic shortly after a major earthquake.

So what this bridge does is,

if you can imagine, rides the
energy rides it away from the energy

that the earthquake puts in.

And it's really rides back
and forth by deforming...

with the motions that
are pumped into it.

Chief engineer Marwan Nader

has to be sure his design
is braced for impact,

because of San Francisco's
history of devastating earthquakes.

This film from 1906
shows how bad it can get...

Marwan had to go back
and learn the lessons of history

when his team sat down
to design the new Bay Bridge...

That puts us in the realm of resisting
earthquakes similar to the 1906 earthquake...

you're talking something
in the order of eight magnitude.

That's the problem
with building anything here...

the whole Bay area sits not on
one seismic fault line, but two...

The infamous San Andreas Fault runs
right through the city of San Francisco,

while the HaywardRodgers
Creek Faults run just to the east.

When the 1906 earthquake hit,
it devastated the area.

It measured at a magnitude of 7.9

and killed over three thousand people.

The 1989 quake killed 63 people

and left another 3,000 homeless

and it was measured at 6.9.

Scientists are predicting
that San Francisco Bay is due

for a really big one sometime
in the next 30 years.

So the Bay Bridge needs
to be up and ready.

Really it's a race against time.

After 1989 earthquake,

the governor of California declared

that the Route 80 which is the
Bay Bridge is a lifeline structure

and it has to be such
that after a major event,

it can be accessed or you know,

shortly after with
emergency vehicles

and not long after that.
Open to the public again.

Meanwhile, on the bridge,
they are feeling the pressure.

The sooner they can get
the last OBG in place,

the sooner they can get on
with the rest of the work

another two years worth of work.

At an estimated cost of $6.3 billion,

the bridge is over budget.

And because of politics and
logistical delays, it's also late.

There's been pushing
to get this bridge opened

as fast as we can, so we're
just doing the best we can to

to give the state what they want.

Right now they're
getting the jacks set up.

Once you bring in the 14W when we get it
secure to the previously erected lift 13,

we need to actually jack the
boxgirder towards the crossbeam.

So they're getting all that
prep work taken care of

while they still have an
opening to work through.

It is pretty exciting,
it's the last one going in,

like I said before, there's
been a lot of work getting here.

A lot of long hours, a lot of late nights...

No one knows when the next
earthquake is going to come

but they are all truly hoping praying

that it doesn't come before
the Bay Bridge is done...

On the old eastern span of the Bay Bridge

commuters get a good daily view of
the progress of the new Bay Bridge.

But every day costs money...

and every day the spectre of
another earthquake hangs over the Bay.

The sooner the cars can be permanently
diverted onto the new span, the better...

They are working against
the clock to prepare the bridge,

because the last girder is ready to
be hauled up by the Left Coast Lifter

and swung into place on the
Self Anchored Suspension Bridge.

It's important to make sure everyone
is where they are supposed to be,

doing the jobs they are
supposed to be doing,

both today and tomorrow.

Cracking the whip is Senior
Field Engineer Katherine Quillen...

They're still grinding and prepping
and cleaning and just basic things

that needed to be done
on the structure itself.

But that all needs to be done today
before fivethirty. Before shift ends.

Everything has to be perfect
and there is no room for mistakes...

nobody knows that better than
engineers Eric Blue and Adam Roebuck,

who have been sweating the
details of this lift for weeks...

So typically we have a

one point two metre gap between sections.

This is a little different as you can
see, the skyway's right behind us.

So now we're gonna have eighteen inches
between this box girder and that box girder

and about eighteen
inches to the skyway.

So it's a tight fit...

you hope it all works
out the way you laid it out.

Knock on wood we haven't
had any one not fit yet.

It always makes me a little bit nervous until
they're all down sitting on the cradle,

you know. We try to do all the
measuring we can. All the checks we can,

take a look at everything
before we go into it,

but, like Eric said, it goes up, it's landed,

it's always, you know?
A little bit of apprehension.

We just wanna make sure everything's
done and in and complete as it should be

so that we're ready to lift tomorrow.

Cause there's still a lot
of bridge ahead of us.

Yeah, it might look like,
you know, everything's done,

the structure's up, but
there's still a long ways to go.

So there it sits... Orthotropic
Box Girder number 14 W,

looking a little like a stranded
spaceship strapped to a barge.

Except now it's ready for lift off.

Mike Green, the superintendent
of marine operations,

will be the guy in charge of
transporting the OBG out to the bridge.

Well, the challenges are
hopefully the current

and the winds will be on our favour.

And we have a great deck and
engineer and crane operator on board so,

they are always in the seat ready...

to make sure that he
pulls the right lever

and releases the right wire.

The man responsible for pulling
those wires is crane operator Ryan Oku.

Tomorrow morning he'll be sitting here in
his command chair on the Left Coast Lifter,

eyes glued to the
load in the sky,

fingers adjusting the hoists

as instructions fly across the Bay
Bridge wavelength into his radio.

She's gonna be centering up
here pretty soon.

He's taking the load
so we should be pretty good.

Basically we'll be

hoisting up the load and keeping the boom
over the top of the load

as we're comin up.

And then we'll bring it up as high
as we can and slide into position.

Much tighter than any of the other lifts.

All the other lifts we've had
more tolerances on either side

than on this lift.

Yeah, it'll be tighter and we have
to come up higher than normal

to get it over other obstacles.

While the load is being hauled
up the barge stays steady

using a series of
anchors and tug boats.

That's Kevin Alger's job.

Well we'll wait until
Ryan has load to elevation

and then once he's at elevation, and everybody
likes it, we're all on the same page,

we'll then begin
to move on in...

it can be pretty tricky, depending
what kind of winds are comin up.

...so it's gonna
be really spot on, exact.

And we don't have too much of an elevation
to go up and over and set the piece

so we gotta kind of split the
uprights and come in and set it.

As night falls on the Bay Bridge

everything should be in place
for the lift in the morning.

The crews have all taken care of
whatever they can take care of...

it's up to the weather
and the tides now.

And to add to the anxiety,

the media has gotten wind
of the lift tomorrow.

Politicians too.

The placement of OBG #14 W is
going to be splashed all over the news.

Everything better be perfect.

It's predawn on lift day.

The crews arrive for their
water taxi ride to the Bay Bridge.

Mike Green is already
working his walkie talkie,

gauging the weather, ship
traffic in the bay everything.

You're clear with this crossbeam
on this air tank.

Okay, roger that. Thank you.

So far it's going like clockwork.

Mike Green said the OBG

would be under sail by 6 am
and it is.

Perfect. Almost.

You always are wondering what's
going to happen next,

you know. Like now we have
ship traffic coming

so we're trying to get ahead of it...

so we don't have to stop.

It would be better not to stop,

but they are forced to.

A collision between the OBG and an
inbound tanker would be a disaster.

It's not like Mike Green or anyone else
has spare girders sitting around on shore.

The OBG is almost at
the end of its journey.

It started out in Shanghai,
came to San Francisco,

was loaded onto this barge

and now it's almost ready
to land up in its home perch.

And as the sun comes up

the curtain is about to rise on the final
act of this part of the Bay Bridge story...

the last Orthotropic Box
Girder will be set in place.

But first it needs to be moored
to the Left Coast Lifter's barge,

so that Mike's crew can
attach it to the crane...

_

Ten foot off of me.

It's a Friday

and on Fridays Mike's lift
crew wears Hawaiian Shirts.

It's part tradition, part superstition.

As long as they have the
shirts on the lift should go well.

Once the OBG starts elevating
towards the bridge deck,

Mike is going to rely on these men

to be his eyes, and good sense up above

as he remains down here on
the deck of the Left Coast Lifter,

wielding two walkietalkies.

Up in the crane cab Ryan
lowers the lift frame into place

so that Mike and his
team can attach the OBG,

while Kevin keeps the barge steady

by sitting tight on his
eight different anchor lines.

Up beyond the lift frame is the target:

Gap in the bridge that
the OBG is going to fill.

Right now the tide is perfect, the
water's perfect and the wind is perfect.

So we've got everything
in our favour right now.

But just as the girder is about to go skyward,

everything comes to an abrupt halt...
for a moment,

Mike hears something that doesn't
sound right...

Well, we heard a little pop

so we wanted to double check everything
and make sure everything is right and safe.

And it's been rechecked
with the engineer and CJ

so we're gonna start liftoff.

Watch the hero comin'
across there, Sean.

Mike starts the lift again.
The OBG is airborne

and there is no turning back now...

all that planning, all that measuring,

all those man hours getting
ready... it has to work...

Now's the time.

From his post in the cabin,

Ryan slowly controls the
Left Coast Lifter's winches,

making sure his payload
doesn't jerk or swing.

Easy does it is the
name of this game...

even though by his own admission

Ryan has downed five cups of
coffee already this morning.

He says it helps keep him focused.

Meanwhile, Mike has to
balance the Left Coast Lifter

so that the OBG
doesn't tip it forward.

In order to do that,
they take on a lot of water...

Right now it's full of ballast,

so we have storage
compartments full of water.

They'll range in size...

two of them I think
can hold 450,000 gallons...

As the OBG inches skyward

the men on the bridge are making sure
they are ready for the girder's touchdown.

The OBG will rest on the
temporary truss like a cradle.

It takes 20 intense minutes
to get the 952 tonne OBG

up above the level of the bridge...
Even though it's calm today,

the girder still swings
around like a piñata.

It has to steady up
before it can move forward.

Now comes the fiddly part...

using every trick they know
on the Left Coast Lifter

Mike, Ryan and Kevin start
moving the OBG into place.

It has to be up high enough that it
will clear the edge of the bridge roadway.

It has to move forward cleanly enough to
make sure it fits into the gap precisely.

The guys know it's a tight fit.

There is less than half a metre of
clearance on either side of the OBG.

What's the boom sayin'?

The boom is pretty much spot on right here.

We could go a quarter
of a metre to the east

and 62 metres to the south.

Roger, stop on one.

Yeah, lookin'
pretty good on the boom.

The eyes and earsfor the
guys down on the Lifter

belong to Mike Green's protégé
up on the bridge, CJ Biskner.

It's his job to guide
the OBG from here on in...

CJ's gaze never leaves the OBG
as it starts to move into place.

His finger never leaves
the trigger of his radio.

He continuously relays instructions
down to Mike on the Left Coast Lifter,

who then passes them
on to Ryan and Kevin.

_

Up on six. Easy now.

The communic ation between
CJ and Mike is vital.

They have a singular understanding.
An ultimate trust...

Yeah, there's no time to pull a tape on it.

You justyou just go with what you think.

And we've been doin it a long time together,

so he knows my three feet, if I tell him
three feet. He knows what I'm lookin at.

Three feet on the money.

There's no second chances.

- We'll come up on one, easy.
- easy wiil be on one.

It's time.

CJ lets Mike know that everything
looks good from where he stands...

everything looks good Mike.

and Mike relays the orders
to Kevin and Ryan.

Kevin starts reeling in his anchor
lines to move the barge forward

with the assistance of a tugboat
on the side of the bow...

This is the reason why
they plan so carefully...

and pray to the weather
gods for sunny skies...

the OBG moves forward as smoothly
as if it were on a conveyor belt.

Everyone defers to CJ's judgment.

We all felt those tremors last week. We
have to remember why we're here today.

We live in earthquake country.

There's so much work
that we have to do

to retrofit major bridges
and roads in the Bay area.

Meanwhile the media and politicians are
cordoned off on the road deck of the Skyway,

ready to make news out of OBG
14 W finally landing in its roost.

The Girder is hanging
over its designated spot.

Ryan and Kevin in the cab
of the Lifter can't see a thing...

they are relying completely on the
instructions over the radio from Mike and CJ.

yes,that`s it mike. all stopped.

We're all stopped.

Roger, all stop.

Then the order comes:
Lower that girder into place...

As the OBG descends the
crew has little room to play with.

can i have someone on the cross beam.

_

ok coming up on six slowly.

They hit their marks perfectly.

The OBG, comes down,

rests on the truss,
the lift cables go lax

and it's time for
the lifter to back off.

Job well done.
Everyone can break... for now.

It might have been the best one
that we've landed yet.

28 out of 28,

and that's what makes all the hard work pay off,

when it fits that well and goes as smoothly as it did.

Excellent. Excellent.
Couldn't have went any better.

CJ's information, his crew.
What they were tellin me.

I was able to adjust on the water

with the anchors as we're
comin in, without touchin anything.

And all the information
he feeds all the time,

that's very important and
he did an excellent job.

The following Monday

and the OBG has spent its first
weekend as part of the Bay Bridge.

Crews are now working to jack the girder
in tight to the rest of the superstructure.

Everything went really,
really smoothly on Friday.

There was a lot of really good communication
between the ironworkers up on top

and the marine superintendent down
below, helping to guide the structure in.

So today, they took large jacks inside and
physically sucked the structures together.

And they'll start bolting everything up.

And getting the alignment,
such that we can begin the weld.

All of that welding and jacking

falls under the supervision of
Adam Roebuck and Eric Blue.

That happens inside,
down in the belly of the bridge.

We do have the catwalk that runs
the entire length so crews can get in.

It is a hundred and fifty year design,

so quite a few generations of people
are gonna be walkin through this thing.

Right now, we're inside the OBG.

We're looking at
Boxgirder 13W and 14W.

So we're in the process of
aligning the two boxgirders together.

That gap is gonna actually get filled
with weld to tie the OBGs together.

And remember Hinge A Pipe Beams?

The gizmos that are designed to take the
brunt of the damage should an earthquake hit?

Those are them right there,

ready to be pulled into place
from one OBG to the next.

So these are the pipebeams we were looking
at from the end of 13W the other day.

They will eventually be
slipped through into lift 14W.

So once we get that alignment,
these'll pull through

and be a seismic connection
to the twotwo bridges.

After five years

the clear span from the Self
Anchored Suspension Bridge and the Skyway

is now one complete ribbon of road.

The crew spent months
lifting in the 28 OBGs,

all the way up to 14 W...

Now the bridge moves
into its final phase...

when they will string the cable so
that the self anchored suspension bridge

will be exactly that

self anchored, from
that 160 metre tower.

No rest for Adam Roebuck...

he moves right onto
cable detail...

I'm just getting into cable works right
now, so that work is just ramping up.

You can see right behind us,

cable works. We have the catwalks in place.

That's what we're gonna use, to access the
cable,

as it goes through the erection, so...

trying to get that work in
trying to get started here pretty soon.

And the bridge designer is pretty
pleased it's all coming together...

Well, thisthis bridge is very unique.

Believe it or not

a lot of a folks have tried
to already copy

some of the aspects of it. I have
been to a couple of bridges in China,

nothing compares to it.

The innovation, that is in it.

Be it from a seismic point of view
or from an engineering point of view,

or from an aesthetic point
of view, it's unmatched.

It can be a tricky business,

maintaining huge structures in an
earthquake zone.

Everyone here feels lucky that
the big one hasn't hit yet,

while the new Bay Bridge
is under construction.

And even if one were to happen,

that temporary truss would be able
to take the brunt of the punishment.

But there's no telling how
the old bridge would handle it.

Last time, parts fell off.

All the more reason for people
to be a little more anxious

to see the new bridge complete

even if the completion date
is still two years away.

Our guys will be talking about
this the rest of their career,

everybody's gonna talk about it
but you can't brag about

some little project like a sidewalk, or

or a some little grade beam
or somethin you're workin on.

Here, when you talk about this,
people are gonna listen to you.

So that's the thing I
really like about this.

This is gonna be something
I can leave back in my history

that a lot guys cannot do that.

That's really what human
endeavouris all about, isn't it?

Taking pride in exceeding your best efforts
on something that is new and necessary.

The Bay Area residents need
this bridge in case a disaster hits...

it's their lifeline.

For the people who've laboured on the bridge

it is something more...
it is a life's work.