The Girona City Council has awarded COTCA SA a technical study to determine the condition of the Gómez bridge, a pedestrian walkway built in 1915 in the city center. The contract amounts to 20,913.96 euros and will lead to an evaluation that will last eighteen weeks.
The intervention comes at a time when the municipal documentation itself admits that the structure has already exceeded its useful life. Even so, before deciding on any conservation action, the council needs a complete diagnosis because the walkway does not retain the original design and presents access difficulties to the abutments and the deck.
The study will analyze the load-bearing capacity of the Gómez bridge
The commission will include a detailed review of the walkway's load-bearing capacity and serviceability, as well as inspections, monitoring, load tests, laboratory tests, modeling, and the drafting of a final report.
The award was below the base tender budget. The city council had set a maximum of 25,305.89 euros including VAT and has finally contracted the work for 20,913.96 euros to complete the diagnosis of a structure erected over a century ago.
A preliminary visual inspection, carried out as part of the Structures Maintenance Plan, had already recommended an exhaustive evaluation. That initial examination led the council to open a specific tender to ascertain the real condition of the pedestrian crossing.
The city council extends the review to other walkways and bridges in Girona
The contracting for the Gómez bridge is part of a broader municipal plan to review walkways and bridges in the city with a preventive approach and to detect pathologies before they necessitate major interventions.
The city council justified the external contracting due to a lack of its own resources. The evaluation requires specific expertise in structures and bridge repair, as well as specialized software and specific equipment that municipal services do not have.
Sergi Font Domènech, deputy mayor and councilor for Ecological Transition and Urban Area, framed the commission within the city's relationship with the Onyar, the Ter, the Güell, and the Galligants.
"Girona is a city that lives facing its rivers" and they are starting "a job that is not seen, but that is essential: to study all the bridges in the city and act with maintenance and in a preventive manner" - Sergi Font Domènech, deputy mayor and councilor for Ecological Transition and Urban Area, Girona City Council
Within that plan, the council already includes actions on the Güell footbridges. It also foresees the upcoming start of works on the Font del Rei footbridge and reinforcements on the l'Areny bridge.
The contract for the Gómez bridge sets an eighteen-week deadline for delivering the final report with the results of the inspections, load tests, laboratory tests, and structural modeling.