Of the many immense challenges of engineering necessary to complete the East-West Road from the cities of Calabar to Lagos in Nigeria, one stands out: the construction of the Patani Bridge over the Forcados river in Delta State.

Spans of 95 meters make up its total length of 850 meters. Each span was precast at a yard that had to be constructed solely for this purpose. This yard, extending over 95,000 square meters of land, was a large project alone.

Each of the bridge’s spans rest across a substructure comprised of a continual box girder – support beams built of pre-stressed concrete that are engineered in the shape of a box or square for increased strength.

Supporting the substructure are several bored piles of 1300 millimeter diameter that were set in place by barges floating in the river. However, as the terrain allowed too few piers for support, the bridge is sustained through a “balanced cantilever” method. Patani bridge was constrcuted while Nadeem Group was a majority shareholder at Setraco Nigeria Limited.