The new Novelty Bridge spanning the Snoqualmie River to Duvall took just seven months to build. Photos courtesy of Wilder Construction Co.

The big claim to fame for the new Novelty Bridge over the Snoqualmie River is it was built in less than seven months — almost a year faster than the county’s original schedule of 18 months. The $10.8 million job involved replacing an 80-year-old bridge with a steel arch bridge.

To achieve the fast-track schedule, workers put in 60-80 hours a week on the project. Work went on 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week.

To make room for the new span, the old 150,000-pound steel bridge was removed using a crane on each side. Its truss was grabbed at each end and walked off the trestle. Measures were taken to keep paint chips from falling into the water.

The main span of the bridge weighs about 1.3 million pounds.

Wilder’s challenges included a rare summer flood that damaged the bridge’s massive footing excavations and the discovery of 90-year-old timbers that were once part of a third bridge that was built over the river before the 80-year-old steel bridge. Old timbers were either removed or driven through in order to put the new pilings in place.

The new bridge’s substructure includes 104 steel piles, 11,000 square feet of steel sheet piling and 1,800 cubic yards of concrete. Also, about 5,000 tons of stone column material was constructed below finished grade in order to reduce the potential for soil liquefaction.

The bridge deck includes 24 precast girders, each weighing 96,000 pounds. The steel arch on the main span contains several thousand pieces and weighs in at nearly 1.3 million pounds.

The new bridge opened to traffic about 20 days ahead of schedule. Wilder put in about 21,000 worker hours without a lost-time accident.