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New Johnson Street Bridge cost nears $100 million; opening delayed

Replacing the Johnson Street Bridge keeps getting costlier and further from completion. Project director Jonathan Huggett will seek another $2.
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Work continues on the Johnson Street Bridge replacement project, now expected to be finished in fall 2017.

Replacing the Johnson Street Bridge keeps getting costlier and further from completion.

Project director Jonathan Huggett will seek another $2.5 million from Victoria council at its July 16 priorities meeting and likely more money later on, he says in a progress report that also states the work will take several months longer to finish.

Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps said Friday that council has no choice but to approve the additional spending, bringing the cost to $96.8 million, up from the most recent estimate of $94.3 million.

“Anything that could have been done should have been done three years ago when the contract was awarded,” she said, citing adequate risk assessment, a larger contingency fund and a solid contract.

When approved by the previous council in 2009, the new bridge was targeted to cost $63 million and be operational by Sept. 30, 2015. Now it’s forecast to open in spring 2017, with completion in the fall of that year. Only a few months ago, Huggett projected an opening in January 2017 and completion in June 2017.

“All I can say is that everybody that was involved in the early stages of the project is now gone,” Helps said. When pressed, she listed the former city manager, director of engineering and initial project director.

A major factor in the delay was the July 2014 discovery of significant flaws in steel fabrication by Jiangsu Zhongtai Steel Structure in China, which led to PCL Westcoast Constructors halting the project.

“Ongoing delays to the fabrication of the steel in China continue,” Huggett said in his report, “partly due to stringent quality control and assurance imposed by both PCL and the city.”

Huggett’s report said the extra money is needed because $3.8 million in potential additional costs have been identified, including consulting services, habitat compensation, a trail overpass, staff resources and legal costs. Once offset by $1.3 million in the contingency budget, the result is $2.5 million.

The city will try to recover some costs through a mediation process agreed to last year when the city and the design and construction companies couldn’t agree on who would pay $10 million in cost overruns.

PCL Construction wants $7.9 million more than the $62.9 million budgeted for its work. Design consultant MMM Group and sub-consultant Hardesty Hanover are asking for another $840,000, and have identified about $1.55 million in costs they say are beyond their contracted commitments.

This cost of mediation — about $600 per hour — is another cost yet to come, said Huggett’s report, along with money for additional professional consulting and material costs. The total of these costs has not been determined, the report said. “However, the total is significant and will require additional funding. Council will be provided with updates as further information becomes available.”

Helps said the latest cost increase arose out of insufficient consideration given to the risks of everything that can go awry on such a complex project.

She and Coun. Ben Isitt voted against the project while sitting on the previous council. They expressed concern about a contingency fund pegged at just four per cent of the project budget. “I was thinking, ‘This is not a good contract to enter into on behalf of taxpayers,’ ” Helps said. Moreover, council awarded the contract when “the bridge was only 60 per cent designed at best.” The theory was this would allow a dozen or more “further optimizations” to the design along the way that would save costs, most of which never happened, Helps said.

“Taxpayers should rest assured that the sewage project that I am at the head of as the chair of the core-area liquid-waste management committee will not have a repeat performance of this because I learned every lesson necessary and then some.”

kdedyna@timescolonist.com