Pinkeen bridge construction process gets under way

Ronan Daly, Project Director with HES Civil; Cllr Tracey O'Dwyer; and Nichola McEvoy, HES Health and Safety Director, at the bridge location today.

The Pinkeen pedestrian bridge project is now heading towards a construction phase following a meeting this afternoon on site with the engineering company who are sponsoring it and Kildare County Council, writes Brian Byrne.

The sponsorship was negotiated by local councillor Tracey O'Dwyer, who symbolically made the first cut in the grass today at the point where the bridge will be built.

HES Civil, a nationally-operating civil engineering company based in Mullingar is sponsoring the building of the bridge, with Kildare County Council taking responsibility for the approach works and appropriate traffic calming measures.

HES delivers complex civil projects in often challenging environments for major utility companies, government, and infrastructure investors both in Ireland and abroad. They also helped out last March on RTE's DIY SOS The Big Build programme hosted by Baz Ashmawy, which renovated the home of Athlone firefighter Patrick Berry who was seriously injured when a wall collapsed on him at a house fire last year.

The Pinkeen bridge project, while a much less life-changing operation than that, will nevertheless make a major difference to the children and adults of Cnoc na Greine and Castlemartin estates who currently make many hundreds of crossings of the stream every day on a makeshift and dangerous traverse of the waterway. "It's part of our way of putting something back into communities where we work, especially the smaller ones," a HES spokesman told the Diary this afternoon.

The bridge will be approximately two metres wide and five metres long, and will involve a pre-cast concrete box section being installed across the stream at a point near the community playground. The location was decided in conjunction with KCC engineers at a site meeting recently, chosen both to best suit the needs of those using the bridge as well as making the least impact on the mature trees along the stream.

"This will solve a lot of issues around here," Cllr O'Dwyer said, "including speed on the roads on either side, and the dangers for those crossing the stream at the moment."

The work is anticipated to take approximately two weeks to complete, and will begin in earnest when the precast box section is ready. A firm date can't yet be pinned down, as such construction supplies timelines remain difficult, but the Diary understands that all involved are hopeful of the project starting in the near term. "Today's meeting marks the start of the process by HES," the spokesman said.

Officials from Kildare County Council today expressed their appreciation for HES Civil's sponsorship of the construction of the bridge, saying it will be 'a huge bonus' for local people.

The matter of a bridge has been raised at Council level since at least 2015. The initial design work by the Council was funded in 2020 from LPT funds allocated to Cllr O’Dwyer.

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