Stockholm-based builder and developer Skanska has won a $303 million design-build contract from Massachusetts DOT to build a new bridge in Lowell, Massachusetts.
The reconstructed Rourke Bridge will carry Wood Street over the Merrimack River, the Tuesday announcement said. Project work commenced in May 2025, with completion expected by spring 2030. Dallas-based Jacobs Engineering will serve as project architect, a Skanska spokesperson told Construction Dive.
“The reconstruction of the new Rourke Bridge will further support the planned growth in this region to accommodate future traffic demand and will improve the overall safety and operational efficiency at this crossing of the Merrimack River,” Paul Pedini, senior vice president of operations at Skanska USA Civil, said in the release.
The current Rourke Bridge was built in 1983 as a temporary bridge and carries about 27,000 vehicles per day, per the project website. The vehicle capacity is deficient and its bicycle and pedestrian features do not meet current standards, the website says.
The new project scope includes a seven-span bridge, intersection reconstruction at both ends of the new bridge, bicycle and pedestrian accommodations, as well as stormwater infrastructure improvements, highway lighting, landscaping and utility relocations. The existing Rourke Bridge will remain open for use until the completion of the new structure. After the new span opens, the existing bridge will be demolished.
But the Massachusetts span isn’t the only news Skanska announced on Tuesday.
The firm said it has signed a supplemental contract worth $240 million with Virginia Tech to construct a new College of Engineering building.
The original project work started with the demolition of the Blacksburg, Virginia-based college’s Randolph Hall, a 166,000-square-foot building constructed in phases that ended in 1952 and 1959.
Construction will now continue, Skanska said, on the renovation of the existing Hancock Hall to tie into the construction of the forthcoming, five-story, roughly 307,00-square-foot Mitchell Hall engineering building.
When finished, Mitchell Hall will house five departments: aerospace and ocean engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science and engineering education.
Work began in the spring of 2024 with the demolition of Randolph Hall, and the project has a target completion of 2028.
