Fort Miller supplied the precast bridge deck and retaining wall system for the Kosciuszko Bridge replacement, the largest single infrastructure project under New York’s NY Works initiative.

Kosciuszko Bridge Replacement

Brooklyn, NY

Project Details

• Owner: New York State Department of Transportation (Region 11)
• Contractor: Skanska-Kiewit-ECCO III
• Designer: HNTB
• Completion Date: 2016
• Scope: 284 Deck Panels, T-WALL®, High Performance Concrete

Project Overview

In 2016, Fort Miller supplied the precast bridge deck and retaining wall system for the Kosciuszko Bridge replacement in Brooklyn and Queens. Locally, this crossing is known as the K-Bridge that carries I-278, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, over Newtown Creek. The Federal Highway Administration named this the largest single infrastructure project under New York’s NY Works initiative. That scale left little room for delay or error. Since the aging bridge carried approximately 170,000 vehicles a day, the NYSDOT needed speed without sacrificing durability. Precast concrete was built for exactly that tradeoff. 

Fort Miller Precast’s work covers a 1.1-mile stretch of the BQE, running from Morgan Avenue in Brooklyn to the Long Island Expressway interchange in Queens. This massive project was jointly funded by both federal highway programs and New York State. As a result, the project had to meet national infrastructure standards on top of the state’s own requirements, with every component needing to clear a higher bar. 

Scope and Details

That pressure showed up first in the deck. For the main span, Fort Miller fabricated 284 precast bridge deck panels. Casting them off-site let crews install them quickly once they reached the site, since staging room along this tight urban workspace was scarce. 

In addition, the team supplied over 135,000 square feet of T-WALL® retaining wall in large and small block units. A modular system like T-WALL goes up faster than cast-in-place construction, which involves pouring and curing concrete on-site. This process goes a long way toward reducing the construction time for a project of this scale.

During installation, the T-WALL units needed to form the bridge abutments with precision, which went off without a hitch. Each unit’s vertical stem fit around the foundation piles seamlessly. A special vertical ribbed formliner finish gave each piece a polished look, ensuring that durability didn’t have to come at the cost of appearance. 

Fort Miller’s scope extended to the adjacent Morgan Avenue Bridge, too. The team delivered additional precast components there as part of the broader K-Bridge program.

Durability stayed the top priority throughout. Specifications called for a 100-year service life. NYSDOT could not afford to miss that mark on a corridor this heavily traveled. To meet it, the team used stainless steel reinforcement to guard against long-term corrosion. That mattered even more given the bridge’s exposure over Newtown Creek. Therefore, using a 9,700-PSI high-performance concrete mix gave the structure the strength to match that extended lifespan. Together, these choices reflect the kind of precision and longevity a project this visible requires.

Impact and Innovation

As the largest single infrastructure project under NY Works, the Kosciuszko Bridge replacement needed a precast partner who could match that scale. Fort Miller’s work there set a new benchmark for this kind of project.

The combination of deck panels and large-scale T-WALL retaining wall came together on an aggressive design-build schedule, proving precast concrete could keep pace with NYSDOT’s most demanding timelines. That same capability carried forward into other major NYSDOT design-build efforts, including the Alexander Hamilton Bridge and Highbridge Interchange. Similar pressures there called for similar solutions. 

Ultimately, the K-Bridge project reinforced precast concrete as a faster, more resilient path forward for bridge construction across New York City and beyond.