CROSS Topic Paper
De la Concorde bridge collapse
Overview
On 30th September 2006, the central span of the de la Concorde highway over-bridge in Laval, Canada, suddenly collapsed onto the road below causing 5 fatalities and 6 injuries. This failure has become important to engineers because of the lessons that were learned.
Contributory factors were poor design (although in accordance with contemporary codes), failure on the part of the designers to look beyond the code, poor quality control and supervision during construction, deterioration over its life as a consequence of poor quality materials, poor maintenance and repair procedures, inaccessibility of critical elements, and failure by the maintaining authorities to act decisively.
Note: this Topic Paper was published by SCOSS (Standing Committee on Structural Safety). Since March 2021, SCOSS is integrated under the name Collaborative Reporting for Safer Structures (CROSS).
Who should read this?
Bridge owners, Principal Designers, civil and structural engineers and those responsible for the maintenance of infrastructure assets.
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