WE ARE REPLACING THE KOIVISTO AND PIKKUHAARA BRIDGES OVER KOKEMÄENJOKI RIVER ON HIGHWAY 11

Kreate will renew the Koivisto and Pikkuhaara bridges on Highway 11 in the Pori and Ulvila areas. Both bridges were built in the 1950s and no longer meet the current load-bearing capacity requirements, making it necessary to replace them to meet current traffic safety and public transport requirements. The contractor for the work is the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency.

The new Koivisto bridge, built by Kreate’s bridge experts, will be a 120-metre-long steel girder bridge with a connector structure, and the Pikkuhaara bridge will be a 60-metre-long prestressed concrete continuous girder bridge. Both bridges will be 15.3 metres wide. Their span heights and spillways will remain the same as old bridges.

We started the replacement of the Koivisto and Pikkuhaara bridges in November 2024. We will build new bridges on the site of the existing bridges, so first we will build temporary bridges over the Kokemäenjoki River and its branch Kirkkojuova next to the existing bridges. The temporary bridges will serve as a detour for traffic during the construction of the new bridges. We started work with piling, on which we will build the temporary bridges.

The bottom conditions in the project area are soft, which adds an additional challenge to the project. The 70-metre-long pipe piles planned for the Koivisto bridge will be one of the most demanding phases of the work, given the ground conditions. Construction in a watercourse is also a challenge, and the design of the works will pay particular attention to issues such as ice flow and potential flooding.

We will build the bridges in a resource-efficient way, which means, for example, using materials from old bridges during construction: once we have dismantled the old bridges, we use demolition concrete to build the embankments on top of the pile slab. We also dispose of the steel structures and brush steel from the old bridges so that they can be melted down for reuse.

The project is commissioned by the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency and will run from 11/2024 to 12/2025. The value of the project is approximately 9.3 million euros.