Visible cracks had developed on the monumental bridge, which has been opened in 1954 and there was looming disaster if nothing was done. Luyimbazi led a team of engineers to explore how they may arrest the situation before it got out of hand.
“The bridge used to undergo regular repairs on the deck but the real danger was on the pillars that held it from underneath the water,” he says. “They had become eroded over time and required serious overhaul if the bridge was to remain usable.”
After thorough inspection, Luyimbazi and his team came up with three options; first was to do major repairs on the pillars as well as the deck, but that required entirely cutting off traffic to and from the eastern region of the country.
What further complicated this is that management of the dam and the bridge was in different hands. Whereas Unra was in charge of the bridge, the dam itself was under the ambit of Uganda Electricity Generation Company Limited (UEGCL).
“So, it was not easy to coordinate work when each party had a different interest,” he says.
The next option was to upgrade the steel railway bridge located a few metres upstream and convert it to accommodate vehicles, but Rift Valley Railways (RVR), which managed the route, had different plans.
The third option was to construct an entirely new bridge and Luyimbazi knew he was headed into uncharted territory with the idea.
“We could have done a simple steel bridge, but we needed to do something that keeps a legacy,” he says.
“We didn’t have much to look up to as far as major bridge construction is concerned but after thorough assessment, we had no option but to go for a new bridge to fit into the traffic trends. In my first job as a civil engineer in the mid-nineties, I had worked with Victoria Construction Company and we built several bridges in Mbale. I had also been involved with doing repairs on the Owen Falls dam while working with Kagga and Partners. But none of those jobs could be equated to the scale of the task that lay ahead.”
Luyimbazi acknowledges that before the setup of Unra in 2007, donors would determine the infrastructure agenda and oftentimes government was never involved in the planning stage.
“We wanted to reverse the trend and have something that suits what we need best, not what the funders want us to have. So, we created a blueprint of the Nile dam so that development partners would now depend on what we would advise.”
THE DESIGN
The beauty of the bridge has caught many people’s eyes but there are several factors behind the scenes that determined the design and shape of the bridge.
“It is not straightforward that one person can sit and come up with a design of such a complicated project…it takes a lot of research on the environment, economy, soils, waters as well as the sky. So, much as I was the spearhead, it is a team effort and I greatly relied on the advice of various technical experts,” he says.
“We explored a 10-kilometre stretch from the old bridge to find the most suitable place to construct the new bridge until we zeroed there. We couldn’t go to Bujagali because it is far and required a new road system to connect to,” he says.
“We could have settled for a basic bridge but we wanted something that would be an endearing symbol for years…something that boosts tourism. People may wonder why a stretch of just 525 metres cost all that money but in due course, they will appreciate.”
Before any construction could begin, Luyimbazi’s team also had to take into consideration the fact that Nile waters are used by several countries and any form of contamination could have adverse effects. But building above water without touching it posed an onerous demand that further complicated the design.
“We had to preserve the Nile waters and couldn’t afford any oil spills or debris into the river. We also couldn’t divert the water and those complicated dynamics raised the cost,” he says.
Meanwhile, his initial dummy was altered after he got wind of information that Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) planned to build an airport in Jinja and, therefore, the new bridge could not be higher than 1,200 metres above sea level.
“The shelf life of a design is three years because many things change in that period…speculators build in road reserves, environment may change…those things could have made the design obsolete.”
FUNDING
Funds worth $112m for the Source of the Nile bridge were secured after the Japanese government accepted to foot 80 per cent of the costs with a soft loan at a 0.01 per cent interest rate; the government of Uganda raised the balance. Not surprisingly, the tender for construction also went to Japanese firm Zenitaka Corporation and Hyundai Engineering and Construction Company of South Korea.
But before any works could commence, Unra had to first do emergency repairs on the old bridge. The work started in 2012 when new jackets were placed on the cross-sections of pillars to prevent waters from further eroding them.
The trusses that hold the deck had to be remodelled to stop vibrations when heavy trucks used the bridge and a new surface was also laid. Then in January 2014, construction on the cable-stayed bridge commenced.
The bridge, which Luyimbazi says is meant to last at least 100 years, has been widely celebrated and many have taken time off to take selfies there. Interestingly, the bridge’s beams look like the symbol of an inverted Japanese yen.
It has been fitted with multi-coloured bulbs to make it truly beautiful at night, and on special occasions, it can be used to highlight important flags and colours the way the French do with their Eifel tower. It is also installed with a health-monitoring device to track its strength.
“That system checks the tension in the cables holding the deck and warns at the slightest discovery of anything loose,” he says. “Over time, they will lose strength and we will know when to replace them.”
However, Luyimbazi says, there is still some work to do.
“The whole project is not yet complete because there has to be a system to weigh vehicles.”
INFRASTRUCTURE SECTOR AT LARGE
Meanwhile, Luyimbazi is also the brains behind the recently-opened Entebbe expressway, something he grudgingly acknowledges.
“I don’t want to take the credit because I was lucky to have a dedicated team of refined engineers with a common line of thinking,” he says. “Coming up with the routes and design of the way plus its intersections required teamwork and even though I was the head of the project, there are many other people. You don’t have to be the best brains but to succeed, you have to have team players.”
He recalls that funding of the expressway was delayed and almost thrown out by parliament until he brought MPs to reality.
“Parliament was reluctant to approve the project yet the longer it took, the higher the cost would rise in compensation and works. I had to practically take the visual dummy I had done to parliament and when the MPs saw how it would help motorists, they quickly approved it.”
Luyimbazi draws a line between Ugandan infrastructure projects and those from other countries. “First of all, I designed the expressway to be six lanes but due to high costs, it was reduced to four lanes,” he says. “Then again, when you see people comparing the costs to those of other countries, what they don’t realise is that in Uganda – unlike other countries – most of the project money goes into compensation than actual construction. Fine, there are some crooks who always find a way of manipulating the system but many times we got derailed by probes and investigations.”
In 2015, Luyimbazi left Unra to go into private practice and consultation.
“The environment had become too toxic and unhealthy for me; so, I sought a new challenge in life,” he says.
Seeing his ‘Unra babies’ up and functional, however, will always be a highlight of his career.
WHO IS LUYIMBAZI?
Born to Ssali Lule and Elizabeth Nalunkuuma Ssali Lule (RIP), and raised in a humble home at Makerere Kavule, Luyimbazi refers to himself as a quasi-engineering economist.
“I’m a professional engineer but most of my work entails planning and I strive to do things that normally people don’t do,” he says. “I love to influence decisions and right from childhood, I have always defined my trajectory in life.”
He studied at Makerere College School for his O and A-level before joining Makerere University in 1991 to pursue civil engineering.
“I was not actually a bright student, but I knew what I wanted to do in life…I remember I was onetime the third-last in S2, yet at the same I was the best in physics,” he says.
After attaining his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, Luyimbazi joined Victoria Construction Company and later Kagga and Partners. He later joined the ministry of Works in 2000 as a project engineer. Thereafter, he was elevated to become a senior project engineer in 2005 before taking over the role of director of planning at Unra in 2008.
“I was just 36 when I emerged the best for the position,” he says about his appointment at Unra. “The challenges I met there were insurmountable. I was in charge of acquisition of right of way, environmental management planning…big tasks, I can tell you.”
“I had no weekends. I was not in the field, I was in meeting after meeting but I also had to be on top of my game.”
He is now the CEO of Basic Group Limited, a multi-disciplinary company with offerings that span engineering, construction, real estate, manufacturing, energy, oil & gas, agriculture, education, commodities trading, technology and financial services.
The married father-of-three also holds two master’s degrees; one of science in Major Programme Management, from the University of Oxford and another in Highway Management and Engineering from the University of Birmingham.
lumudavid@gmail.com
