The Office of Louisiana Highway Construction has set an ambitious goal of fixing 62 small bridges in rural areas of Louisiana by end of next year. The Louisiana Legislature established this new office earlier this year and granted the new agency with emergency procurement powers. The director of this new office, Archie Chaisson, says that allows them to hire contractors faster.
“We’re going to start to engage the contractors now. You grab some contractors who are quality guys from across the state, bring them in on the ground four and actually be able to move these things a lot quicker,” Chaisson said.
Chaisson says it typically takes two years for DOTD to repair a bridge, but the state legislature gave the Office of Louisiana Highway Construction the ability to cut through the red tape faster so it can fix 62 bridges in a 15-month span.
“And although we adopt some of their standards and we’re going to build some quality bridges based on how we build infrastructure across the state, we have things like emergency procurement authority and some other things that the legislature gave us to go tackle some of these things quicker,” Chaisson explained.
The legislature used $100 million from the state’s Rainy-Day Fund to pay for the bridge replacement program. These are relatively small bridges, no more than 150-feet long, but Chaisson says they are in poor condition, and have weight limits or closed to all traffic, which means detours.
“And as a former parish president, I understand that and how some of these all-system bridges can really impact daily commuters in parishes and different regions of the state,” Chaisson said.
Chaisson says in most cases it’s a complete removal of the old bridge and a complete construction of a new bridge.
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