Kentucky Transportation Cabinet – Brent Spence Bridge Emergency Repair Project

An incident involving two trucks caused an explosion and flames on the lower portion of the Brent Spence Bridge in Covington on November 11, 2020. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet had to move fast to address the incident and restore a vital connection that carries 160,000 vehicles every day across the Ohio River and into neighboring Cincinnati. For this $5 million project, KYTC saved valuable time by taking a non-traditional approach, appointing an in-house and non-engineer project lead to oversee the all the tasks needed to manage this emergency project and lead daily virtual meetings on the progress. Inspectors also worked alongside engineers to assess damages and design repairs at the same time. KYTC improved effective communication with traveling public on the state of the bridge repair by creating overhead traffic signs, weekly-streamed news conferences with project updates, and created a dedicated project website. The bridge re-opened three days before the Christmas holiday thanks to the collaborative and quick efforts of KYTC.