Along the dusty path of a construction site on the north side of the Johnson Street Bridge, down a staircase to a concrete pit, there’s evidence that the costly and overdue new bridge might actually be coming together.
“This is the heart of the bridge,” project director Jonathan Huggett said from the centre of the largely empty pit. It’s where the mechanism for raising and lowering the bridge, the “Swiss clockwork” source of so many headaches, will ultimately do its work.
The $105.6-million project, already more than $42 million over its original $63-million “fixed” budget, is projected to open to traffic by the end of 2017.
Critics have long derided the bridge’s unique and untried design as the major factor behind massive cost overruns and completion delays.
Now, engineers and contractors are starting to put the pieces together.
“Significant progress has been made. It’s really exciting to see this project, complex as it is, coming to a conclusion,” said Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, who visited the site for the first time in a year.
During a media tour of the site, much of what Huggett points out requires some imagination.
A 120-tonne equalizer built in Birmingham, Alabama, is already mounted, but the steel rings it will cradle are in still China. The same laser technology that Boeing uses to make commercial aircraft will steer the bridge’s parts together to within half a millimetre of the plans, Huggett said. When complete, the bridge will be painted grey but illuminated with blue LED lights at night.
He called the current stage — setting the bridge’s foundation — crucial.
“If the foundations are wrong, everything above it will be wrong, so we’re taking a lot of time to ensure the bases are installed properly,” Huggett said.
Work has also resumed on steel rings in China, where the project faced significant roadblocks. Fabrication halted in July 2014 after inspections found that the steel was not being built to design and that there were significant flaws, including defective welds.
“We’ve had a lot of inspectors, we’ve tested every weld,” Huggett said. “We’ve had people all over the fabrication plans in China. So we have good confidence that while there’s been delays, when it finally arrives here, it will be good steel and it will be appropriate.”
For Huggett, who worked on Vancouver’s SkyTrain and the Lions Gate Bridge, the bridge’s complexity is virtually unprecedented.
“The fact that it goes up and down means the design is such that is has to be very accurately constructed,” he said.
“I doubt whether you could find more than a handful of engineers around the world that has actually worked on a movable bridge of this sort.”
Helps said she is relieved to see an end in sight.
A milestone for her was the end of mediation with contractor PCL Constructors, design consultant MMM Group and sub-consultant Hardesty Hanover over cost overruns.
The city dodged a bullet by settling at $2.4 million, when claims against it were upward of $17 million, she said.
“It really reset the project and brought people back together. We have more quality assurance coming out of it,” Helps said.
The bridge’s complexity could even be seen as an asset, once the memory of its price tag fades. Helps said she was pleased to learn the public will have a view of the machinery.
“How often is a bridge also an educational opportunity? I picture class trips to see this engineering feat in our downtown,” she said.
“I know it’s been a painful project for the city and for the public. But, hopefully, after it’s open, that will fade. … At the end of the day, we’re going to get a bridge that will last 75 to 100 years.”
