Bay Bridge flaws: bad welds, delays cost many millions extra How Caltrans let bad welds, delays cost hundreds of millions over bid

Metropolitan Transportation Commission Executive Director Steve Heminger speaks at a hearing of the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee to discuss issues with the Bay Bridge at the State Capitol May 14, 2013 in Sacramento, Calif. less Metropolitan Transportation Commission Executive Director Steve Heminger speaks at a hearing of the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee to discuss issues with the Bay Bridge at the State Capitol May 14, ... more Photo: Max Whittaker/Prime, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Max Whittaker/Prime, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 7 Caption Close Bay Bridge flaws: bad welds, delays cost many millions extra 1 / 7 Back to Gallery

Caltrans paid hundreds of millions of dollars over the original bid price for work on the Bay Bridge eastern span that was plagued by shoddy welding and completed more than a year late, state documents reviewed by The Chronicle show.

In agreeing to pay the extra money, Caltrans accepted responsibility for much of the delay, the documents show - even though bridge officials have publicly blamed bad welding done at the Shanghai factory of China's largest maker of heavy machinery.

Officials told state legislative investigators that weld-related delays added $100 million to the cost of the bridge's tower and steel modules that form the road deck. However, contract documents show that Caltrans took blame for more than a year and a half of problems in China and paid out more than $275 million for those delays and to get the bridge done on time.

The documents show that bridge officials, eager to avoid missing the span's scheduled September 2013 opening, warned an oversight panel that failing to approve the payments would result in long, "burdensome" negotiations with the bridge's main contractor.

It took two major deals with that contractor, American Bridge/Fluor, and its Chinese supplier, Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. - known as ZPMC - to settle disputes over the delays.

Caltrans conceded that its own actions, not weld-related problems, caused the delays and ran up the cost of what was originally a $194.3 million contract to more than $450 million.

The extra money - more than the $240 million it cost to build the entire new westbound span of the Carquinez Bridge - will be coming out of the pockets of toll payers on Bay Area bridges for years to come.

Caltrans' role

Steve Heminger, executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, said Caltrans "had its fingerprints all over" the problems in China, and that ran up costs.

"The basic back and forth in China was over who was delaying whom," he said. "We think we assigned adequate responsibility for the parties."

Heminger said the alternative was ending up in court. "Neither party was blameless, and we both had an interest in getting the bridge done as quickly as possible," he said.

But state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, head of the Senate transportation committee and a critic of Caltrans' handling of the project, said the builders "didn't care about money."

"It was quite obvious to me that they didn't care about the toll payers," he said. "Bad performance was rewarded, over and over again, and people who tried to bring that bad performance to light were punished."

'Hundreds of cracks'

A report produced for DeSaulnier's committee this year revealed the extent of the welding problems at ZPMC. A quality-control expert helping Caltrans said inspectors found "hundreds of cracks" in deck sections starting soon after the company began production in 2007.

In 2009 - shortly before it first went public with the weld problems - Caltrans agreed to pay $65 million extra to American Bridge/Fluor and ZPMC. Caltrans said its design modifications accounted for 197 days of delay at the Shanghai factory, according to the settlement documents, which make no mention of bad welds.

The next year, Caltrans conceded that it was to blame for further delays. This time it was problems drawing up detailed bridge plans that set back the timetable by an additional 307 days.

Caltrans paid $145 million for the delay - and added $40 million as an incentive for ZPMC and American Bridge/Fluor to finish by 2013.

Over the years, Caltrans accumulated plenty of evidence of welding problems at ZPMC. By the time the company was done in 2011, Caltrans had found more than 1,700 defects in welds that hold bridge sections together - which all had to be repaired - and cited the firm for more than 900 instances where its work failed meet state standards.

Falling behind

Fabrication work began falling behind schedule as early as January 2008, according to Caltrans documents. ZPMC and American Bridge/Fluor, however, took the position that Caltrans was delaying work with excessive demands for information and last-minute design changes.

"We were at a standstill," Heminger said. "If we had kept up the procedure we had, where Caltrans and their inspectors were rejecting virtually anything that ZPMC put their hands on, we would never have shipped anything."

In May 2009, Caltrans took responsibility for some of the delays and made the first installment toward what became a $92 million contract boost. The money came on top of change orders worth more than $25 million, including $13 million Caltrans provided to pay for weld repairs and devise a procedure to resolve disputes over what constituted a defect.

But Caltrans soon found more cracked welds and other flaws on the completed deck sections bound for Oakland. One ship was called back after leaving.

In a closed-door meeting, Will Kempton, then head of Caltrans, warned American Bridge/Fluor and the span's design firm, T.Y. Lin International, that the bridge authority was an "unhappy client," records show.

The joint venture promised to inspect all the welds, rather than the usual sampling of 25 percent, and said "everything is being done to pick up the pace," according to minutes of the July 2009 meeting of the bridge oversight panel Kempton chaired.

In September 2009, Andrew Fremier, deputy director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, told the regional body - made up mostly of elected officials - that weld problems had put the project "about a year behind in fabrication." He made no mention of the settlement under which Caltrans had already taken responsibility for the delays.

Fremier said in an interview that although the settlement documents did not mention ZPMC's welding problems, Caltrans had factored them into the deal.

"It was their responsibility for the weld repairs," he said. "The agreement has the sum of the pluses and minuses."

Questioner transferred

Even as Fremier delivered his commission report, the conflict over the welds was building. Caltrans engineer Doug Coe was a casualty. After he questioned whether enough had been done to inspect for welding problems, his bosses at the agency told him to pack his bags and leave his post overseeing the Chinese factory work in September 2009. He was soon assigned to a retrofitting project on the Antioch Bridge.

Tony Anziano, the toll bridge program manager overseeing the Bay Bridge construction, explained to DeSaulnier's Senate committee in January that he had transferred Coe to avoid going "to war with the contractor."

"That's never a good thing on a construction contract," Anziano said. "It will cost you time, it will cost more money, and it will not resolve the problems that you are arguing about."

Caltrans agreed to the final piece of the $65 million settlement in November 2009. Anziano, in a memo, urged the bridge oversight panel - now consisting of Heminger, then-Caltrans chief Randy Iwasaki and the late Bimla Rhinehart, then head of the state Transportation Commission - to take the deal and avert "protracted, complex and burdensome" talks.

Trying to 'move on'

"The case was going to be muddled," Heminger said. "We thought it was a better business decision to try to get these things settled in an equitable way and move on."

Anziano said the welding problems weren't that severe. "We had millions of welds on the work over in China," he said in an interview. "The vast majority went very well."

The second major settlement involving toll-payer dollars was reached less than a year later, when Caltrans agreed in September 2010 to pay $145 million to American Bridge/Fluor and ZPMC to settle a dispute over who was to blame for the 307-day delay.

The agency added bonuses of $40 million to meet its deadlines.

The settlement was to compensate the builder and contractor for delays in drawing up the detailed plans needed to execute T.Y. Lin International's design.

The root of the problem was that the bridge was to be slightly curved and tilted at the point where the suspension span's main cable was to be anchored. Engineers had to draw up 4,900 plan sheets, and T.Y. Lin had to approve the details.

Drawn-out process

It took nearly two years of talks involving the main contractor, T.Y. Lin and Caltrans to work it all out.

"It was incredibly frustrating to have a $20 million (final shop drawing) contract holding up a $6 billion bridge," Heminger said.

Roumen Mladjov, a bridge engineer who served on the expert panel that picked the span's design in 1998, said the plans should have taken a few months at most to complete.

"There is no simple bridge," he said. "Some curvature is normal for every bridge of this length."

Bob Bea, a professor emeritus in civil engineering at UC Berkeley, said the lengthy delay suggested mismanagement by Caltrans.

"Typically, the time to produce shop drawings is short," Bea said. "Even when plans are very complex, I've never seen it take more than 12 months."

Even after the dispute was resolved, ZPMC's weld problems persisted and required "extensive repairs," a panel of weld experts said in November 2010. It recommended that problem welders be fired.

No-shows for training

Caltrans even put up a half-million dollars for ZPMC to better train welders, but the workers did not show up for the classes.

Heminger said the need to finish the bridge before a disastrous earthquake could destroy the old span influenced officials' decision to pay more for the work.

"The choice we faced when we were in China was, do we keep letting these disputes accumulate (and) duke it out at the end of the project, after we have made each other as mad as humanly possible? Or do we try to deal with the friction as we went to preserve a more productive relationship with the contractor?" Heminger said.

"We were racing an earthquake - that is why time played such an important role for us," he said. "We were, within reasonable parameters, going to trade time for money so we could get the bridge done sooner."

Ex-Caltrans chief Iwasaki, who now runs Contra Costa County's transportation agency, said his old agency deserved credit for keeping work from grinding to a halt.

"That is a very complex bridge," he said. "There's not many companies who could build that bridge, and it's open."