of what we can do when we put together that needs of our transportation infrastructure preserve any of life in our history and ensuring that our infrastructure for both  vermont it's two hundred three hundred fifty six feet in total our challenge was in the modern just since it was too narrow how do we deal with making it appropriate for our transportation infrastructure for the next hundred or two hundred years and wise people came together and came up with a plan they actually split across you're half right there that preserves our which is that it is in fact on the national registry of historic sites and has been for more than twenty years so to tell you a little bit more about that aspect of it i'd like to welcome of the end cousins the preservation trust of vermont i've really happy to be part of this sort of moment to spend a long time coming for a and it's really exciting for those of us in the historic preservation community and even more so for those in historic preservation and transportation communities there's nothing straightforward about rehabilitating this bridge as most of you know considerable planning collaboration innovation and even compromise went into the successful outcome so why are some trust bridges in vermont replaced while the checkered house bridge was worthy of this investment seven we know excuse me an unprecedented nineteen inches of rain fell in thirty six hours and over one thousand two hundred bridges of vermont disappear swept away and washed away during the flooding in a massive bridge rebuilding campaign was initiated by a federal state partnership offering standardized replacement trusses depending on how long the crossing was for fifty to one hundred feet when you've got this sort of truss hundred to one hundred fifty you've got that sort of truss none of the standard trusses that were being put in and twenty eight twenty nine fit this site was a three as governor was saying three hundred fifty six feet long and something had to be custom fabricated for this site so here engineers specified a pennsylvania truss which is what we see behind us and even after the words been involved it's still a pennsylvania trust and it got its name from using the pennsylvania real roads where the economy of steel in the this plus design help carry heavy loads over long distances the bridge name itself the checkered house bridge which derives from the colonial era in which is at the other end of the bridge of just a very brief  paragraph on trust bridges in general they represent a great deal of engineering innovation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in america and in vermont assembling relatively small easily transported pieces of steel into carefully planned geometrical forms transfer the downward forces to each bank of the river in its simplest form truss bridges put the arch over the roadway instead of underneath using networks of steel to lot especially over the last couple of years the white nigger the checker house bridge was carefully planned and executed to respect the historic character the span and meet the contemporary highway needs other than the floor beams out of the deck which had to be widened virtually every piece of the original bridge is still intact overhead bridge components that wide the structure that you see on that site were designed in such a way using your original configuration materials  highway administrator matthew hate to support the innovation and this first in the country concept to preserve an engineering heritage be contemporary capacity for a highway system the entrepreneurial spirit of the  ther the funders of projects like this and they juggle the safety issues the historic preservation issues environmental issues and efficiency and using the dollars and they do a great job and the richmond's own representative and o'brian i'd like to introduce our chief engineer and and the man who's responsible for our program development and the trans going to tell you a little bit about how this project is about more than engineer i was the bridges back there for the state of vermont and this bridge i remember very well a number of times would have to come here and other what we call the circle of through the side members would actually close the road because the road was so narrow then and then go underneath and say ok you got to make some more repairs as bridges seen a lot of years of service and we network with their operations division to make ongoing repairs we also had the post the bridge down to lower load limits which was a good thing to do when you think about the regional mobility but today i'm a happy man as chief engineer knowing that we now have a structure that can carry the load and will serve us well into the future and is more readily accessible to our bridges section and as well now also when you look at the dollar figure that's on the board for the project for me it's a very practical solution that we had as well when you look at the complexity of widening this bridge the first in the country really and how we're going to go about the means and methods with our traditional design build the design bit build practice we jumped into the design build mode it's our second one in the state and it couples the design expense with the construction expense and puts the teams together and that's what we had here where really help to evaluate on the fly the means and methods that could get this job done in a practical manner and that's what we see it's a great success and also for this sleek design of a truss  bridge mentioned the idea of the freeboard underneath the bridge when you think about it these crosses and this type of application a very practical in that we don't have to raise the road in your approach is because the superstructure underneath is so much more sleep with a cross the sign room folks from boswell engineering who are quality assurance people on the job finley engineering who actually figured out how we would widen the structure  were was our environmental subcontractor on the job fitzgerald and holiday were our public relations folks thank them for all the information they gave you advance testing tested all the concrete and our largest major project like this is got to be approved for funding and our congressional delegation does a great job and making sure that we have the money we need from the federal government you h