Completion of the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge required close but sometimes awkward collaboration between the New York State Bridge Authority and the New York State Department of Public Works. The Bridge Authority hired the D. B. Steinman Company to conduct preliminary studies, recommend potential bridge locations, and develop designs, but the Department of Public Works had to declare the bridge to be in the public interest and grant formal approval before construction could proceed. The agencies also had to reconcile competing needs involving an optimal bridge location, acceptable links to New York State's rapidly developing highway network, and the interests of property owners along the Hudson River shoreline. Project engineer Walter E. Joyce, a Yale Sheffield Scientific School graduate and Kingston resident, brought experience from numerous railroad and highway bridge projects, including a railway tunnel through Mt. Royal in Montreal and work on the Rondout Creek Suspension Bridge, Bear Mountain Bridge, and Philadelphia-Camden Bridge, as well as consulting on Kingston's Governor Clinton Hotel and the Rondout Savings Bank Building. The D. B. Steinman Company, formed in 1923 by bridge designer Dr. David Barnard Steinman, designed more than 400 bridges from the 1920s until Steinman's death in 1960; much of the preliminary work for the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge was designed by Steinman before he turned his attention to the Mackinac Bridge. On the public works side, Bertram D. Tallamy, superintendent of the Department of Public Works and chairman of the state's Thruway Authority, was deeply involved in planning and building arterial roads and interstates across New York and, after the bridge opened to traffic in February 1957, became Federal Highway Administrator. J. Burch McMorran, chief engineer during construction, was a Syracuse University graduate and veteran of World Wars I and II who rose from road gang laborer to chief engineer and later oversaw construction of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge, while James S. Bixby, the district engineer, supervised engineering projects including the Mid-Hudson Bridge, Storm King Highway, Palisades Parkway, and the Catskill section of the New York State Thruway.