CHI Consulting Engineers
Enhancing Safety and Quality of Bridge’s Design and Construction

Founded in 2016, CHI Consulting Engineers (CHI) offers bridge design and consulting services with a vision to improve the safety and performance of design and construction. “Since our inception, we have been dedicated to the mission of providing high quality engineering services to the bridge owners and the contractors. This has helped us to be a part of several large-scale and complex projects and grow successfully at an average rate of about 50 percent for the past five year,” says Qi Ye, Founder of CHI.

CHI’s services include bridge design, construction engineering, peer review, independent checking, BIM modeling, and structure health monitoring. “We specialize in advanced finite element analysis of steel and concrete bridges, design of high load jacking frames and temporary supports, and develop innovative designs and techniques for meeting a client’s unique demands,” adds Ye. They also assist clients in developing safe and efficient construction sequences and proposing design changes for seamless fabrication and construction. “We have conducted many independent checking or peer reviews for both bridge owners and contractors to assess the adequacy of designs and make necessary recommendations,” says Ye. The company does not stop there. Its experts investigate the source of errors in case of accidents during construction or servicing to prepare comprehensive investigation reports. “We integrate technical expertise, advanced analysis capabilities, and cutting-edge engineering technologies such as BIM software to deliver our services efficiently to clients,” says Ye.

By leveraging nearly three decades of experience in bridge design, including suspension and steel truss bridges, Mr. Ye and his team have built a strong reputation in the industry with its successful service delivery. They designed innovative high load jacking frames for the pin and hanger replacement at the main spans of the Robert Moses Causeway bridge in Suffolk County, New York. Their robust and efficient jacking frame design achieves improved safety and performance when compared to conventional jacking schemes. It easily accommodated the longitudinal and rotational movements of the 467-foot long suspended truss span during the jacking without introducing eccentric loads on the load-bearing gusset plates. Also, with easy installation and removal features, it enabled faster construction and lowered costs with the least impacts on traffic. CHI also developed a detailed and precise 3D BIM model, which was used for FE modeling, producing contract and shop drawings, and designing temporary work platforms. This also helped in achieving smooth workflow with improved quality and efficiency simultaneously. Consequently, all pins and hangers were replaced in October 2018, cost-effectively and on schedule. Moreover, engineers could easily emulate the concepts and details of this jacking frame system to develop similar safe and robust systems for suspended truss spans and many other aging steel bridges in the U.S. In fact, the Robert Moses Causeway project won the Platinum award on the 2020 Engineering Excellence Awards from the ACEC New York.

Many such successes drive CHI to continually deliver high-quality solutions by focusing on innovations. They have developed a program that automatically determines the rebar quantities based on the finite element analysis of 3D concrete solids. By automating this process, CHI has not only saved a lot of time in converting analysis results into rebar details and quantities on contract documents but also improved the design quality of reinforced concrete. Additionally, they have designed highly reliable stress and vibration monitoring system to improve the quality and efficiency of monitoring. The company plans to employ a more diverse, multi-discipline team and strengthen its forensic investigation capabilities to deliver quick and quality investigation reports. “We aim to offer efficient and high-quality services to provide a greater value to owners, contractors, and engineering firms,” concludes Ye.