The Jacques-Cartier Bridge Maintenance Centre project is a high-visibility building adjacent to Boulevard Taschereau at the south exit of the Jacques-Cartier Bridge. This building, for use by the Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges Incorporated, offers multiple garages and stations for maintenance vehicles on the ground floor.

On the 3rd floor, with a single-level entrance at the top of the embankment, a tubular steel-framed “bridge” structure housing offices and control systems is cantilevered atop the maintenance garages. It is composed of large steel trusses of 65 m in length and an architecturally exposed roof in cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels. The diagonals of the trusses are also specially oriented in the direction of traffic surrounding the building. The foundations of the building are supported on bored piles.

Technical challenges :

• Management of a significant pyretic swelling potential of the backfill in place.
• Poor soil quality and proximity to the bedrock on the ground floor, leading to the use of a bored pile system.
• Building foundations on two distinct levels, on the ground floor and on the 3rd floor.
• Large spaces without columns required on the ground floor, leading to the use of only 4 rows of support for the 3rd floor. The results are spans of up to 25 meters, an overhang of more than 5 meters and a hanger from a large part of level 2 to the trusses on level 3.

Notable solutions and innovations :

• Use of an empty formwork ("void form"), under a part of the structure in order to protect it from the pyretic swelling of the backfill in place.
• Design of a structural slab on grade, supported on bored piles, in order to limit the amount of excavation and backfill during construction.
• Design of a sliding support system on the embankment foundations of level 3, in order to limit lateral forces and improve the seismic behavior of the building.
• Design of huge steel trusses one-storey high and 64 meters long to accommodate the large spans of the 3rd floor.
• Use of a system of multiple rigid frames to perpendicularly brace the level 3 "bridge", in order to provide an obstacle-free a space of ±740 m² and a flexability in layout modularity for the architects.

Press reviews :

• LE COURRIER DU SUD - Un nouveau centre d’entretien au pied du pont Jacques-Cartier