Back from China, Helps confident of bridge steel
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps admits she doesn’t know good steel, but she’s reasonably confident the steel in the Johnson Street Bridge will be good.
“I don’t want to say if the steel is good or bad, but we have the right people there to make sure the job is done well,” said Helps in a telephone interview Tuesday, newly back from a trip to China.
“Every single weld gets measured and is assessed in about six different ways,” she said. “I was very confident in the quality-assurance process I saw there.”
Helps returned to Victoria on Sunday after a nearly two-week trip to China where one visit was made to the site of the steel construction for Victoria’s Johnson Street Bridge, projected to cost $105.1 million and to be open by the end of 2017.
The steel, produced by Jiangsu Zhongtai Steel Structure Co., has come with quality problems almost from the start. Structures were not built to design, and welds were defective. In May 2014, fabrication was halted, and months of delivered steel was rejected.
Costs of the bridge, meanwhile, mushroomed from an original budget of $63 million.
Helps said the project is now surveyed by five parties: The city, Jiangsu Zhongtai Steel, the principal contractor PCL, the engineering firm and an independent, third-party quality-assurance company.
“The quality assurance, that we didn’t have in place initially when everything went wrong, is now there,” she said.
Helps said while in China she also met face to face with the Chinese steel company chairman. Past problems were acknowledged and work is continuing in a new spirit of collaboration.
She also said arbitration in March settled differences arising during the very public setbacks between the city, PCL and everyone else involved with the bridge. Helps was happy about the reduction in claims against the city as a result of the mediation, from $17 million down to $2 million.
“As part of the mediation process, all parties came together and got a new path, a new collaboration so we don’t end up in the same situation,” Helps said. “Instead of working together, everyone was just pointing fingers at each other and asking for more money.”
The main reason behind the $22,206 visit to China for Helps and the 18 other members of the trade mission was to deepen relations and improve business connections between Victoria and China.
“A big part of our mission was to establish the right connections so when Victoria businesses go over there, they know who to talk to and how to get going,” she said.
Helps said it’s obvious China has a real need and an eagerness for clean or green technologies, as well as other business services and know-how.
“It’s polluted as hell, but the government is really taking the need for better environmental practices very seriously,” she said.
“There are so many business opportunities over there right now for people doing clean tech or green tech,” Helps said.