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Construction crews recently began preliminary seismic work for the $3.5 billion Columbia River Crossing project.

Crews are ground testing on Hayden Island to gain information on how the foundation of the bridge should be designed. Five steel piles will be built by Spokane, Wash.-based , which was awarded a $4.22 million contract in December by the CRC project team. Once the piles are built, a series of Pile Driving Analyzer (PDA) tests will be conducted to assess the capacity of the piles.

Hydrologic jacks will be used to test the piled by pushing and pulling on them. A sensor will evaluate how much weight each pile can take. The piles won’t be used in the highway project, but the tests will determine how to build the piles that will be used.

Elsewhere, , a subcontractor, will dig three 250-foot-deep, concrete shafts. Once they are complete, they will also undergo PDA testing.

Rodney Rodriguez of Max J. Kuney said the testing period will start in May and will last three weeks.  Seismic testing has already be done on the Washington side of the river, he said, so the tests will mainly occur on Hayden Island; one shaft will be dug in Vancouver, Wash. – Reed Jackson