Then came the shock! The specialist company Heinrich Rohlfing Ltd. from Stemwede, which had been counted in for the steel construction, informed us completely unexpectedly that they would not be able to carry out the work despite clear agreements.

They had no capacity to carry out the work for us, was the terse explanation. We had reached an agreement with this bridge construction company in particular because of their very good reputation with regard to costs and performance in the renovation of the Denklingen bridge.

But against the background of the unbelievable damage to the railway infrastructure in the affected areas caused by the July flood disaster, this bottleneck in capacity is quite understandable: the repair of the July flood damage to public DB lines of course has priority.

Now, however, we had to "go back to square one" and look for a new partner for the steel construction work. After a long and intensive search and several on-site meetings with metal and steel construction companies, we succeeded in finding the company Heinrich Send Ltd. from Castrop-Rauxel, which was able to carry out the necessary work both, technically and in terms of deadlines.

Since the protective and working scaffolding had been erected under the bridge in the meantime, it was possible to carry out a much more precise analysis of the damaged areas and thus determine the work steps that were now necessary. The engineering office for construction technology E. Heymer from Wetter (Ruhr), which has a lot of experience in the field of renovation of old bridges, was also involved in the determination of the work to be carried out.