Temporary Bridge and Construction Logistics

The construction of a temporary bridge crossing King Khalid Road represents one of the more revealing indicators of The Mukaab’s construction scale. This bridge, a piece of temporary construction infrastructure that will be removed upon project completion, is itself a significant civil engineering undertaking. Its purpose: to connect the Mukaab construction site in the al-Qirawan district to material staging and disposal areas on the opposite side of one of Riyadh’s major arterial roads. The fact that a temporary bridge of this magnitude is justified by the project’s construction logistics requirements illustrates the extraordinary scale at which the Mukaab’s construction operates — a scale where even support infrastructure qualifies as a notable engineering project.

King Khalid Road is one of Riyadh’s primary arterial corridors, carrying high volumes of public traffic between the northwestern suburbs and the city center. The New Murabba development site straddles this arterial, with the Mukaab construction site on one side and material processing, staging, and repurposing areas on the other. Without a grade-separated crossing, every truck moving material between these areas would need to enter King Khalid Road’s traffic flow, cross multiple lanes, and exit on the opposite side — a movement that would create safety hazards, traffic congestion, and operational delays for both the construction project and the road’s regular users.

The 800,000 Truck Movement Reduction

The bridge is projected to eliminate approximately 800,000 truck movements on public roads for the earthworks phase alone. This figure illuminates the logistical intensity of the 40-million-cubic-meter excavation. Each cubic meter of excavated material must be loaded onto a truck, transported to a processing or staging area, and the truck returned empty for reloading. A standard articulated dump truck carries approximately 20 cubic meters per load, meaning the 40-million-cubic-meter excavation requires approximately 2 million loaded truck trips — plus 2 million empty return trips, totaling 4 million truck movements for the earthworks phase.

The 800,000 figure represents the public road truck movements specifically eliminated by the bridge — a subset of the total truck movements, reflecting the proportion of material transport that would otherwise traverse King Khalid Road. The remaining material movements occur within the construction site boundary, using internal haul roads that do not interact with public traffic.

To appreciate 800,000 truck movements: if these trips were distributed evenly across the approximately 30-month excavation timeline, they would amount to roughly 27,000 truck movements per month, or approximately 900 per day. At that frequency, a heavy truck would enter or exit King Khalid Road every 30 to 60 seconds during operational hours — a rate that would overwhelm any intersection and create untenable conditions for public road users.

Bridge Design and Engineering

The bridge creates a direct, grade-separated connection that keeps construction vehicles off public roads entirely for the bulk earthworks phase. Grade separation means the bridge deck passes over King Khalid Road at sufficient height to maintain the road’s full traffic capacity underneath, without requiring traffic signals, lane closures, or speed reductions on the public road.

The bridge’s design must accommodate the heaviest earthmoving vehicles — loaded articulated dump trucks carrying 40 or more tonnes per trip. This load requirement drives the structural design toward robust steel or precast concrete girder systems with deck capacities far exceeding those of standard highway bridges. A highway bridge typically designs for 44-tonne maximum vehicle loads; a construction haul road bridge must accommodate off-highway dump trucks that can exceed 100 tonnes when fully loaded.

The bridge’s width must allow two-way truck traffic — loaded trucks heading to the staging area and empty trucks returning — without requiring trucks to stop and wait for opposing traffic. At minimum, this means two full truck lanes plus safety margins, resulting in a deck width of approximately 10 to 12 meters. The approach ramps on each side must provide grades gentle enough for loaded trucks to climb without excessive power requirements or braking risks on descent, typically limited to 8 to 10 percent gradient.

The bridge’s temporary status means that it is designed for the construction period only, with planned removal upon project completion. This influences the design approach: temporary bridges can use simpler foundations, standardized steel components, and bolted rather than welded connections to facilitate both rapid construction and eventual dismantlement. However, the loads it must carry and the safety requirements for a structure spanning an active public road demand engineering rigor equivalent to permanent infrastructure.

Environmental and Community Impact

The bridge’s primary justification is reducing the environmental and community impact of The Mukaab’s construction on the surrounding Riyadh neighborhoods. Without the bridge, 800,000 heavy truck movements on public roads would produce multiple adverse effects.

Traffic congestion. Heavy trucks accelerating from rest, climbing grades, and making turning movements at intersections operate at speeds well below passenger vehicle flow, reducing road capacity and increasing travel times for all road users. During peak excavation periods, the frequency of truck movements would effectively convert King Khalid Road into a construction haul route, degrading service levels for the tens of thousands of daily commuters who use this arterial.

Dust generation. Loaded dump trucks carrying excavated material generate dust from both the load surface and the road surface. In Riyadh’s dry climate, where ambient dust levels are already elevated, the addition of construction-related dust can degrade air quality in adjacent residential neighborhoods, damage vehicle finishes, and accumulate on building surfaces. The bridge eliminates this source of dust by keeping loaded trucks on internal haul roads where dust suppression measures (water spraying, rumble strips, wheel washes) can be applied without affecting public road operations.

Noise impact. Heavy construction vehicles produce significantly more noise than passenger cars — particularly during acceleration, braking, and gear changes at intersections. Diesel-powered dump trucks operating at the frequency required by the excavation program would create sustained elevated noise levels in adjacent neighborhoods, potentially exceeding the nighttime noise limits that protect residential amenity. By routing truck traffic over the bridge and through internal haul roads, the noise impact is contained within the construction site boundary.

Road damage. Pavement damage from heavy vehicles increases with the fourth power of axle load, meaning a single loaded dump truck causes thousands of times more pavement damage than a passenger car. Eight hundred thousand heavy truck movements would accelerate the deterioration of King Khalid Road’s pavement surface, requiring costly repairs funded by public road maintenance budgets rather than the construction project.

Safety. The interaction between heavy construction vehicles and passenger cars at intersections creates collision risks that are disproportionately dangerous for the smaller vehicles. Construction truck drivers, operating large vehicles with limited visibility, must share road space with motorcyclists, pedestrians, and passenger cars. The bridge eliminates this interaction entirely, reducing the probability of serious accidents involving construction vehicles.

Broader Construction Logistics Context

The temporary bridge is one element of a comprehensive construction logistics plan that must manage the Mukaab’s enormous material requirements. Beyond excavation, the project requires delivery of 1 million tonnes of structural steel, millions of cubic meters of concrete, facade panels for the 640,000-square-meter exterior surface, mechanical equipment, and finishing materials. Riyadh’s landlocked location means that most materials arrive by road from the port of Dammam, approximately 400 kilometers to the east, or from manufacturing facilities within Saudi Arabia.

Steel delivery logistics alone present extraordinary challenges. One million tonnes of structural steel, arriving in fabricated sections by road from manufacturing plants or the port of Dammam, requires approximately 25,000 to 50,000 heavy truck deliveries depending on the size and weight of individual steel sections. These deliveries must be scheduled to align with the erection sequence — steel sections must arrive at the site in the order they are needed for installation, stored temporarily on-site if necessary, and moved to the erection point using mobile cranes. A construction logistics plan of this complexity requires dedicated logistics management staff, sophisticated scheduling software, and coordination with steel fabricators, trucking companies, and the project management team.

Concrete delivery during the raft foundation and superstructure phases will require a continuous supply of ready-mix concrete from multiple batching plants. The world’s largest raft foundation may require continuous concrete pours lasting 24 hours or more to ensure monolithic concrete placement without cold joints. These marathon pours require coordinated delivery from multiple concrete trucks on a precise schedule, with backup plans for equipment breakdowns, traffic delays, and mix delivery failures.

The Temporary Bridge as ESG Evidence

The bridge serves as tangible evidence of the New Murabba Development Company’s ESG commitments. A memorandum of understanding signed between NMDC CEO Michael Dyke and Princess Nouf bint Muhammad bin Abdullah Al Saud focuses on developing innovative solutions for ESG strategies and sustainability. The temporary bridge directly implements the environmental and social components of this commitment: environmental impact reduction through avoided truck emissions and dust, and social impact reduction through preserved road safety and traffic flow for the surrounding community.

The carbon dioxide emissions avoided by eliminating 800,000 truck movements are measurable and significant. Each heavy truck trip on public roads — including fuel consumption during stop-and-go traffic, idling at intersections, and acceleration from rest — produces more emissions per kilometer than the same truck operating on a direct bridge crossing without stops. The cumulative emission reduction, combined with the earthworks material repurposing that eliminates landfill trucking, positions the Mukaab’s construction logistics as a reference case for sustainable mega-project practices.

Adaptive Use Through Construction Phases

The contractor ecosystem includes dedicated logistics coordination that sequences material deliveries to align with construction phase requirements. The temporary bridge will serve different functions as construction progresses — initially supporting earthworks during the excavation phase, then potentially adapted for concrete delivery during foundation construction, and eventually for steel delivery during superstructure work if the Mukaab resumes construction following the feasibility review.

Each construction phase generates different logistics demands. The excavation phase produces outbound material flow (excavated earth moving away from the site). The foundation and superstructure phases reverse this flow (concrete, steel, and cladding materials moving toward the site). The bridge’s bidirectional design accommodates both flow directions without modification, but the weight specifications of materials in each phase may differ — excavated earth is lighter per cubic meter than structural steel, potentially allowing higher speeds and different truck configurations during the later phases.

The bridge may also serve the New Murabba Stadium construction, which begins in 2027. If the stadium site is accessible via the bridge, the 180,000-square-meter venue’s construction logistics can benefit from the same grade-separated crossing, extending the bridge’s useful life and amortizing its construction cost across multiple project elements.

Structural Monitoring and Maintenance

The bridge operates under a continuous structural monitoring regime that tracks load-induced deflections, fatigue accumulation in critical steel members, and bearing pad condition at the support points. Load cells at the bridge supports record the weight of every crossing vehicle, providing real-time data on cumulative loading and identifying any overweight vehicles that exceed the bridge’s design capacity. This monitoring data feeds into the bridge’s maintenance program, which schedules inspection and repair activities during planned construction downtime to avoid disrupting the continuous material flow that the bridge supports.

Bearing pad replacement, deck surface repair, and approach ramp maintenance must be scheduled during periods of reduced construction activity — typically during summer labor restriction periods or scheduled construction holidays — when truck volumes drop sufficiently to allow single-lane operation or temporary closure. The bridge’s maintenance requirements add a recurring cost to the project’s logistics budget, but this cost is negligible compared to the traffic management, road repair, and community impact costs that would accumulate without the bridge.

Safety Protocols for Bridge Operations

Bridge operations follow strict traffic management protocols that govern vehicle speeds, spacing, and directional flow. A maximum speed of 20 kilometers per hour across the bridge deck reduces dynamic loading on the structure and provides adequate stopping distance for fully loaded dump trucks. Minimum vehicle spacing — maintained through visual supervision by dedicated traffic marshals at each bridge approach — prevents convoy loading that could exceed the bridge’s capacity for simultaneous vehicles. During darkness, illumination systems light the bridge deck and approach ramps to highway standards, preventing the visibility-related accidents that are disproportionately common on construction haul roads.

Weight verification stations at the bridge approaches ensure that no vehicle exceeds the design load capacity. Overloaded trucks are diverted to a designated waiting area where excess material is removed before the vehicle is permitted to cross. This weight enforcement is particularly important during the later construction phases when steel sections — which are significantly denser than excavated earth — may approach or exceed the per-axle load limits that the bridge deck was designed to accommodate.

For independent context on construction logistics practices in mega-projects, see Construction Week Online for regional coverage and Engineering News-Record for global industry reporting.

Temporary Bridge and Construction Logistics