Bridge Brothers co-founder Eli Angell is the first to admit that when he launched the company with his brother in 2015, he didn’t know a thing about building bridges.
“I’d had the website built and had started cold calling before I actually knew how to design, build and install a bridge,” Angell said.
More than 1,000 bridges later, the 2008 Clemson graduate from Westminster said his company has become an innovator in the bridge market.
But it wasn’t easy going early on, said Angell, who considered law school before going to work for a West Coast manufacturing company that builds marinas and floating docks.
“I always liked the trades, and soon realized that there was room in the bridge-building market for efficiencies and digitalization,” Angell said. “So I cashed in my 401(K) and Roth IRA, and learned from the ground up.”
Cultivating leads using digital marketing strategies – something the competition wasn’t doing at the time – brought in the first project.
It didn’t go well.
“That first bridge we built completely wrong,” Angell said. “Just a total disaster. But we took what we learned and built two bridges, then four, and so on, embracing that learning curve along the way.”
Early on, Bridge Brothers used a team of engineers to do its own designs while subcontracting out the fabrication. Now, it has integrated all disciplines into an engineering, procurement and construction firm. With operations headquartered in its Pickens facility, Bridge Brothers has about 80 employees locally and another 50 in Portland, Oregon.
“We offer full turnkey projects, and we’re vertically integrated, which keeps costs down” Angell said. “We’ve grown to the point that we’re doing Department of Transportation projects, and of course, there’s the Unity Park bridges in downtown Greenville.”
Bridge Brothers connect Unity Park
The Unity Park project, perhaps more than any other, brought a level of brand exposure to the company. Angell said the opportunity came through a relationship with MKSK, the architecture team behind the project.
“We’d done some work with them on the West Coast,” Angell said.
As for the design of the 165-foot-long Auro suspension bridge – the largest and most iconic of the three bridges the company built for the park – Angell said inspiration struck at a most unlikely moment.
“I stopped to have a martini at Hal’s Steakhouse, in Atlanta, and began sketching alternative concepts on a napkin for Unity Park. Ultimately the concepts culminated in the suspension bridge that was built within the project budget,” Angell said. “It’s a true suspension bridge.”
Using cables shipped from Italy and Corten steel, which requires neither paint nor galvanization, along with iron-hard and flame-resistant Brazilian Ipe wood decking, Angell said the bridge is both sturdy and self-sustaining.
“We wanted to create something that does not come with high maintenance costs,” Angell said.
What makes the Unity Park projects particularly rewarding for the company, Angell said, is having it come to fruition so close to home when so many projects are hundreds of miles away.
“To be able to see it, walk on it and use it,” Angell said. “That’s the intrinsic reward, getting to see people enjoy what our team – our engineers, our welders, our installers – have worked to build.”
