Liberty Construction Seeks to Ensure Safety of Campus Bridges

“Hey, what’s up?”

Whenever Bruce and Debbie Brownfield picked up a phone call from their son, Brandon Brownfield, those were the first words they heard.

As a tower crane technician, Brandon Brownfield spent some days in the office but spent most days working hundreds of feet off the ground. Two or three times a week, he would call his parents and chat for the 30-minute commute home after leaving his office or job site.

But on Thursday, March 15, around 5 p.m., it was Brandon Brownfield’s wife and mother of his three daughters, Chelsea Brownfield, who made a phone call to Bruce and Debbie Brownfield. Chelsea Brownfield was unable to contact her husband and was letting her parents-in-law know that the GPS tracker on his truck showed that he was very close to the pedestrian bridge collapse at Florida International University that had happened that day.

Immediately after receiving the call, Bruce and Debbie Brownfield packed some clothes and began the three-hour drive down to the site of the bridge collapse. When they were about half an hour away, a friend called to confirm that Brandon Brownfield’s truck was underneath the bridge.

The Brownfields arrived at the scene of the bridge collapse late Thursday night.

“We thought there was hope at that point. We were just mostly hoping for a miracle,” Bruce Brownfield said. “We could only see the tailgate of Brandon’s truck — the rest was completely covered by the bridge wreckage.”

It wasn’t until Sunday morning that the truck was finally pulled out from under the bridge and Brandon Brownfield was officially pronounced dead.

The FIU bridge collapse, which caused six fatalities, made national news and brought the sobering consequences of innovative but questionable construction methods and inadequate safety precautions to national attention.

According to Daniel Deter, the vice president of major construction at Liberty University, the FIU bridge was an example of a new technology for bridge construction. The bridge had been completely assembled “on the ground” — guard rails and all — before it was hoisted into place over the busy street.

“(The new construction) was a great concept because you minimize the traffic that you disrupt,” Deter said. “Obviously the downside is that something didn’t work right.”

Liberty’s Planning and Construction department has established many safety and security measures for the ongoing construction on campus. According to Deter, the stability of any bridge on Liberty’s campus is largely dependent on the foundation and on third-party quality control inspections utilized throughout the entire construction process.

“We don’t wait until the bridge is done and then inspect it and have (an inspector) try to figure out — is that weld good, is that concrete thick enough, is the concrete right?” Deter said. “What we do is hire third-party quality control.”

Deter said that every time concrete is poured, the quality control inspector tests a sample in the lab to ensure that the mix is correct.

“They actually put pressure on (the concrete sample) and then break it and make sure that if it’s supposed to be 3,000 pounds per square inch, that’s the kind of concrete we actually have,” Deter said. “If any of those tests fail, then we know that there’s a problem with the concrete that we put in place.”

A similarly rigorous steel inspection also takes place — an inspector checks every weld and bolt to ensure that everything fits together securely. According to Deter, the concrete and steel inspections are followed by a general safety inspection, where the height of guard rails and any potential tripping hazards are addressed.

“We’ve got enough safety measures in place to protect not only the workers’ safety — because obviously we don’t want a worker getting hurt — but then after the workers are gone, it can stay safe for a long time,” Deter said.

Deter said that roads that run underneath bridges constructed on Liberty’s campus are closed to public traffic until all the final inspections have occurred.

“Before we will allow people to drive underneath (a new bridge), we make sure it’s at the point where the welds have been checked, the bolts have been checked and everything that is connection-related is solid,” Deter said.

Debbie Brownfield said that perhaps the horrific effects of this collapse could have been avoided had traffic not continued under the bridge while its stability was still being determined.

“They could have stopped the traffic while they were uncertain of the safety of the bridge,” Debbie Brownfield said. “They should have just not had traffic there at all.”

Safety measures and construction practices at Liberty are constantly being reevaluated and improved in order to ensure the safest possible campus.

“Nothing is worth one person getting hurt,” Deter said. “It’s a very sad thing that happened at (FIU), and we don’t want to have anything like that happen (here at Liberty).”