Victoria’s Johnson Street bridge project continues to be plagued with steel-fabrication problems in China that consultants say are largely due to substandard workmanship.
While PCL Constructors, the company building the bridge, anticipates completing steel fabrication in China in January 2017, there are ongoing concerns that require attention, says a report prepared by sub-consultant Hardesty & Hanover that will go to city councillors next week.
“Specifically, weld defects, base-metal damage and deviations from fabrication documents and/or project requirements have been noted by both the owner’s and the contractor’s fabrication quality teams,” says the report.
Jiangsu Zhongtai Steel Structure Co. Ltd. is making steel for the bridge but months’ worth of steel was rejected two years ago because it was not up to standard.
Fabrication of steel for the bridge project was halted in July 2014 after inspections found it was not being built to design and there were significant flaws in the steel, including defective welds.
That resulted in project director Jonathan Huggett beefing up quality assurance on the bridge project. When steel fabrication resumed after a four-month shutdown, PCL and its contractor, Atema, were put in charge of quality control and the city sent its own inspectors to China through project sub-consultant Hardesty Hanover.
Many of the issues “appear to be the result of substandard workmanship, substandard practice, or a misunderstanding of the reference standard by the fabricator,” the report says. “In our opinion, the fabricator’s processes require further improvement. If fabrication processes are improved, we believe that many of the fabrication issues can be avoided in the future.”
All the parties involved have developed a technical support program, including having Hardesty & Hanover personnel in China for key fabrication activities, to get to the root causes of the problems, the report says.
Mayor Lisa Helps said she has confidence in the steel the city will be getting. “I have confidence in the product, while the process has stunk, quite frankly,” she said. “I’m confident that when the bridge shows up here it will do all the things that it is supposed to do and that it will last for as long as it was supposed to, if not longer.”
She said that in any large steel welding project, there are non-conformance reports.
“We’ve got — and I don’t want to say probably more resources on the ground than necessary in China because you can never have too many — but we have all of the resources necessary,” Helps said.
