SYDNEY'S BRIDGE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4657, 4 February 1924, Page 1

SYDNEY'S BRIDGE.

A COLOSSAL UNDERTAKING. ESTIMATED TO COST £5,500,000. The proposed construction of the North Shore bridge, the magnitude of wi ich will give it the distinction oE being one of the biggest engineering un’dertakings in the world, has brought into competition several notable firms- abroad, as well as two Australian firms. Of the firms abroad one has its headquarters in Glasgow, another in Ontario, Canada, another in Middlesbrough, England, and the fourth in New York. The tendering firms include the English Electric Company, of Sydney; the Goninan Bridge Corporation Ltd., of Newcastle; Sir William Arrol and- Co., of Glasgow ; the Canadian Bridge Co., Walkerville, Ontario,; Dorman, Long and Co, Middlesbrough ; McClintic, -Marshall Products Company, New York. These six tenderers submitted twenty tenders, made up of eleven for the cantilever type, seven of the arch tyoe, two of the inverted arch type. The tendering, it is considered, can be regarded as satisfactory. No serious difficulty is anticipated by the Minister in the preparation of the report on the tenders, and within a reasonable time the Cabinet should be able to consider the acceptance of a tender.

The estimated cost of the harbour bridge set down in the enabling. Act is £5,750,000, inclusive of land resumptions. Land resumption is estimated to cost approximately £350,000 to £40.0,000, leaving, say. £5,400,000. The cost of the bridge itself must not exceed this sum, plus 10 per cent. No tender submitted to the Ministry could, therefore, have exceeded £6,000,000. Jit least one- tender was probably very much less than this figure.