A new Craigflower bridge won’t open until March 2014 at the earliest as difficulty in obtaining steel has dashed any hope of a December completion.
“There is definitely going to be a delay, due to the delivery of the steel, of approximately three months,” Deb Becelaere, View Royal superintendent of engineering, told council Tuesday.
“The bridge contractor was hoping to start erecting the steel in August and it now looks like it will be mid-November.”
View Royal and Saanich, which are jointly undertaking the project, had built a $300,000 bonus into the $15.9-million bridge replacement contract as an incentive for the contractor, Don Mann Excavating, to have the new bridge open to traffic by Dec. 1.
But difficulty in getting steel means there is now no way that target will be met, View Royal councillors were told.
Becelaere said the best estimate for opening of the new bridge is the spring.
Completion date for the entire project is May 16, 2014. If it isn’t finished by then, the contractor begins to incur penalties.
The bulk of the raw steel has arrived at the SureSpan facility in Duncan, Becelaere said. “It’s a steel bridge and there’s a lot involved. There’s 16 trusses that have to be built. There’s a lot of welding involved,” Becelaere said.
“We’ve definitely been talking to SureSpan to see if they can speed up the work. They are doing double shifts, but they’ve only got a certain amount of skilled welders that can work on the bridge. They’re going as fast as they can.”
Both View Royal Mayor Graham Hill and Saanich Mayor Frank Leonard expressed disappointment the December target won’t be met.
The two municipalities did all they could to try to lessen traffic disruptions during the bridge replacement, Hill said.
“It’s frustrating, where despite the best of efforts, circumstances intervene to make life more difficult for our merchants and our community,” Hill said.
“We did our best in trying to encourage the completion of that project by bonusing the early completion. You don’t often see that in civic projects,” he said.
“We’re certainly disappointed,” Leonard said.
“We would have loved to have seen an early completion but we’ll ask for people’s patience as it goes through into 2014.”
On average, about 18,000 vehicles, including 1,500 trucks, used the bridge daily prior to its closure in April.
Craigflower bridge construction updates are available at viewroyal.ca
Meanwhile, Victoria councillors have been told steel has been secured for the $92.8-million Johnson Street bridge replacement project. The goal is to open the new Johnson Street bridge by late 2015.
