The design-build contractors for the Royal Jubilee Hospital’s Patient Care Centre are due $8.5 million from insurance companies to cover the expense of concrete-slab repairs during construction, states a B.C. Supreme Court judgment.
The contractors took their insurance companies to court, seeking to recoup $14.9 million spent over six months to fix cracks in the slabs used in the eight-storey building. The centre of the slabs sank so much that some collected rainwater. The costs included $4 million to repair cracks, level and top the slabs and another $4 million for higher subcontractor costs, said the court decision released Wednesday.
Insurers Allianz Global Risks US Insurance Co., Zurich Insurance Co. Ltd., Temple Insurance Co. and GCAN Insurance Co. argued that the problems in the claim did not fall within the policy’s coverage.
Acciona Infrastructure Canada Ltd. and Lark Projects (2004) Ltd., working together as Acciona Lark Joint Venture, were hired to design and build the 500-bed, $348-million Patient Care Centre, which opened in 2011.
Judge Ronald Skolrood decided the joint venture is entitled to recover $8.5 million. Of that, $7.149 million is for slab repair, $1 million for indirect costs, and $350,320 for profit margin.
Most of the construction was carried out by subcontractors and concrete slabs were built on site, based on engineering designs. The goal was to create slabs that would rise in the centre. The plan was for the height of the centre of slabs to decrease, leading to a level or nearly-level surface as the concrete cured over time, Skolrood said.
In mid-2009, it was discovered that the top of the slabs were losing their angle too much, resulting in a concave recession in the centres, he said. Some collected rainwater. Most slabs had been poured by that time. Also, many slabs showed cracks near the support walls and columns, he said. Some cracks were wide enough to insert a credit card.
The joint venture said the cracking and lower centres in the slabs were caused by damage to the supporting rebar when slabs were overloaded during their construction, Skolrood said.
Problems resulted from slab construction procedures that failed to account for their “unusually thin design,” the judge said. He added that he did not find that the design of the slabs was the cause of the problems. Experts testified that the thickness was permissible under regulations as long as “proper accommodations were made during the formwork/reshoring process.”
Two engineering firms hired to test the slabs said they meet Canadian standards and are safe, Skolrood said.
Repairs to fix the top of the slabs resulted in high dust levels. That meant that each of the facility’s four wings had to be isolated and sealed and then cleaned extensively to meet hospital standards.
Slabs were ground down and self-levelling filler was put in. Repairs took about six months and resulted in delays for other subcontractors, the decision said.
Suzanne Germain, Island Health spokeswoman, said in a statement following the release of the decision: “This is one of the advantages of a private-public-partnership arrangement – the construction timelines and costs are fixed at the beginning, so any cost issues or time overruns are up to the contractor to bear.
“In the case of the Patient Care Centre, area residents have a beautiful new hospital, delivered on time, on budget and with no construction/infrastructure issues.”
The Jubilee is designated as the post-disaster centre on Vancouver Island.
