# Work on bridge for California high speed rail project stopped by errors



## tgstubbs1 (Aug 11, 2020)

*Work on bridge for high speed rail project stopped by errors*
Construction errors, along with possible design problems, have halted work on a major bridge for California’s high speed rail project in Central California, the Los Angeles Times reports. The bridge in Madera County, north of the town of Madera, will carry traffic over the high speed and adjacent BNSF Railway tracks. Work started in 2016 and was supposed to be finished in 12 months, but has been stopped since last November because steel strands supporting the structure began snapping. No plan has been finalized to repair the bridge, which is being supported by temporary structures to keep it from collapsing. 









Digest: Errors halt construction on bridge for California high speed project - Trains


Monday afternoon rail news: Work on bridge for high speed rail project stopped by errors Construction errors, along with possible design problems, have halted work on a major bridge for California’s high speed rail project in Central California, the Los Angeles Times reports. The bridge in...




trn.trains.com














'Horrible sequence of mistakes': How bullet train contractors botched a bridge project


A bridge that was supposed to take a year is incomplete after four, partly because of corrosion and other problems involving California's high-speed-rail contractors.




www.latimes.com






A series of errors by contractors and consultants on the California bullet train venture caused support cables to fail on a massive bridge, triggering an order to stop work that further delayed a project already years behind schedule, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

On the Madera County bridge project, the reporting lines are complex.

Tutor Perini is the so-called design builder of the bridge, though its team member Parsons actually designed the bridge.

Tutor’s work is overseen by an independent check engineer, the New York-based firm STV. And Parsons’ work is partly reviewed by an independent site engineer, also STV.

Above STV is a so-called project and construction manager, a joint venture of Bay Area firms PGH Wong Engineering and Harris & Associates, which manages the day-to-day contract.

Under its contract, Tutor was supposed to grout the ducts within 10 days of the strands’ installation in April. Tutor’s design firm, Parsons, wrote a “field change notice” that called for a delay in the grouting until all the strands in all of the ducts were installed, Fernandez said.

It was submitted to STV, where it sat. Fernandez and Christine Inouye, the rail authority’s director of engineering, said in an interview that STV never sent that notice to Wong Harris or to the rail authority.


----------



## neroden (Aug 15, 2020)

Tutor Perini needs to be blacklisted. They haven't been winning any of the later CAHSR contracts.


----------



## Anderson (Aug 23, 2020)

Well, clearly what was needed was for Perini to _have_ a Tutor...


----------



## railiner (Aug 23, 2020)

What's going on with these transportation projects in California? It sounds like the Transbay Terminal fiasco, in a way....


----------



## Nick Farr (Aug 23, 2020)

railiner said:


> What's going on with these transportation projects in California? It sounds like the Transbay Terminal fiasco, in a way....



There's a huge gap in experienced metalworkers and other tradesmen throughout California. A large chunk of the workers who have this experience were undocumented and ended up getting deported. 

Given the boom/bust nature of the work, attracting and retaining qualified workers to do this work outside of major metros is difficult.

The rush to bring in and use prefabricated sections and snap it all together is also a relatively new thing and not as tested, which can compound the all of the above errors.


----------



## west point (Aug 23, 2020)

post tensioning is still a design work in progress. Just look at the FIU disaster in south Florida.


----------



## leemell (Aug 24, 2020)

Damage evaluated, repair designed and pre-construction is underway. Contractor is footing the entire cost. No schedule impact, not on critical path.
4



Like


----------

