Williams Bridge Co., a Northern Virginia construction firm and steel girder manufacturer, plans to downsize its Manassas plant and consolidate manufacturing operations in Richmond and Prince William County.

The Manassas plant fabricated the steel girders that hold up the Woodrow Wilson Bridge  and the major interchanges near Springfield. But higher steel prices, delayed contracts and low margins on projects have hurt the company in recent years, reports the Washington Post.

Williams Bridge is a subsidiary of Williams Industries, which has lost nearly $1.4 million over the past nine months on revenues of $28.8 million. In its quarterly report, the parent company stated that in response to "steel price escalations and supply uncertainty," it would consolidate and relocate portions of its two manufacturing operations.

The corporate "right sizing" includes a significant downsizing of the Manassas plant and designation of the company's Richmond facility as the company's "primary production facility." The company also plans to eliminate "redundant operations" and invest in unspecified technology to improve quality and reduce costs. Sales and administration functions will remain in Manassas.

Williams Bridge has maintained a 180,000-square-foot facility on East Fourth Street in South Richmond since 1987.

An added consideration in the consolidation, Vice President Marianne Pastor told the Times-Dispatch, is that heavy industry may not fit well with the commercial development taking place around the Manassas facility. The site is located near where the FBI and the Prince William Police Department have put up buildings.

"Quite candidly, the real estate we're sitting on is not necessarily at the highest and best use fabricating steel," Pastor told the Times-Dispatch. "We aren't exactly the darlings of the neighborhood."