Anchorage Daily News

UAF students win bridge-design competition

The University of Alaska Fairbanks steel bridge team took top honors recently at the 2008 ASCE/AISC regional Student Steel Bridge Competition at the American Society of Civil Engineers Pacific Northwest Conference at Portland State University.

The six-member team was among 16 teams from universities across the Pacific Northwest competing in the annual contest, which requires students to design and build a 20-foot steel bridge capable of supporting 2,500 pounds.

Teams must strictly adhere to a set of complicated rules in the bridge's design and assembly. They are then judged on how quickly they can assemble their bridge as well as the aesthetics of the structure and its construction economy, lightness, stiffness and structural efficiency.

The UAF team took first place overall in the competition, as well as first place in lightness and economy, second place in aesthetics and efficiency, third place in stiffness and fifth place in construction speed.

The team will compete in the National Steel Bridge Contest in Gainesville, Fla., in late May.

Southcentral Foundation expansion begins

Southcentral Foundation has started construction of an 80,000-square-foot expansion of its Anchorage Native Primary Care Center at 4550 Diplomacy Drive. The expansion is driven by a rising number of patients since the last expansion in 2000, said Katherine Gottlieb, chief executive of Southcentral.

The number of Southcentral outpatient customers has grown from 25,000 to over 41,000 since then, partly because of migration from villages to Anchorage, she said. The expansion should be done next year, and plans call for the building eventually to be connected to the new parking garage on the health campus, she said.

GCI, MTA team up for fiber-optics network

Anchorage telecom company GCI and Matanuska Telephone Association plan to build a new fiber-optics network along the Parks Highway this summer to connect existing cables in Wasilla to those in Fairbanks by year-end.

Utility Technologies Inc. of Wasilla is leading the construction, Meridian Management Inc. of Anchorage will provide project management and Dryden & LaRue Inc. is doing engineering and permitting support. GCI and MTA plan to share the cable, according to GCI.

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