Construction delays on the Fifth Street Bridge project have pushed its completion date back by as much as six months.
Originally slated to reopen Dec. 22 at the latest, the target completion date now is not until mid-June of 2018.
Adam Sullo, director of engineering for the municipality, said the contractor, Looby Construction out of Dublin, Ont. ran into delays from the outset, and will pay penalties for missing the completion deadline.
“There was initially a delay in the demolition. The contractor was working hard to accelerate the schedule. They went to seven days a week in late September,” he said.
Work was to begin on the bridge in May, right after RetroFest, but it ultimately didn’t start until the first week of July.
Sullo admitted the municipality had early worries given the slow start to the $7.45-million project.
“We’d expressed some concern early on. The demolition work was subcontracted work and I understand they (Looby) had some difficulty scheduling the subcontractor initially,” he said. “They weren’t able to make up for that lost time.”
He said the contract didn’t have a firm start date, but instead had the completion date of Dec. 22, the latest work could go in the year to allow at least a temporary layer of asphalt to be put on the bridge cement.
“It’s very difficult to do portions of the work after Dec. 22. You can pour a (bridge) deck in the winter, but you can’t protect it,” he said. “You can’t put traffic on there without significantly reducing the life of the bridge.”
Sullo said Looby representatives informed the municipality they were about five weeks behind schedule, forcing the delay through the winter months until asphalt providers go back into production next spring.
The delay will prove expensive for Looby, a division of EllisDon, as Sullo said the contact has an initial penalty for missing the Dec. 22 completion date of $40,000.
But it also comes with a ticking $2,000–per-calendar-day additional penalty.
That’s more than $400,000 in penalties between Dec. 22 and the new completion date next year.
“There is a penalty clause here. The municipality is upholding the contract,” he said.
Sullo said that provides incentive for Looby to get the work done sooner.
“It’s significant enough to be meaningful without being overly punitive,” he said. “The contractor is facing a penalty. It’s in their best interest to finish sooner.”
Sullo admitted the municipality and the contractor are in dispute over design changes to the bridgework and if that impacted delays in construction, but said he couldn’t comment further on the matter.
“No matter how much we talk about it, the fact remains it will not be open before Christmas,” Sullo said of the bridge. “It’s frustrating. A lot of things about it were very frustrating.”
Looby personnel will continue to work on the bridge as long as the weather permits, Sullo said. Winter weather conditions will force the shutdown of construction operations in January, which will restart again once weather conditions allow.
Sullo said the delays in the completion of the bridgework would have a trickle-down effect, as the municipality has work planned in other parts of Chatham that will have to be rescheduled until the bridge is finished.
