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kacydeneen · 5 years

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Engineers Dismissed Crack Concerns on Morning of FIU Bridge Collapse

Less than five hours before the Florida International University pedestrian bridge collapsed, the project’s engineers dismissed concerns about cracking in the concrete, assured colleagues it was safe to keep the road below open and said temporary shoring to hold up the span was not necessary as repairs proceeded, according to minutes of a two-hour meeting held on site the morning of March 15, 2018.

At 8 a.m., the engineers working for the span’s designer, FIGG Bridge Engineers, climbed onto the bridge deck and saw in person what they had until then only seen in photographs: cracks forming on the north end of what was to be FIU’s signature project.

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According to minutes of the meeting that began one hour later in a construction trailer, "FIGG pointed out the cracks look more significant in person" than they did in photographs.

But not significant enough, it turned out, for anyone in the meeting, including a Florida Department of Transportation representative, to take steps to close the road below.

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Asked at the meeting why the bridge was cracking, a FIGG engineer told the dozen others present "it just happened," according to minutes released Monday by the Florida Department of Transportation.

FIGG "assured" those in the meeting "there was no concern with safety of the span suspended over the road," the minutes state.

Engineers Dismissed Crack Concerns on Morning of FIU Bridge Collapse

At 1:47 p.m., as a subcontractor was carrying out FIGG’s orders to increase tension in a truss that was cracking, 950 tons of concrete fell to SW Eighth Street, killing five people in vehicles and a worker who was atop the bridge canopy.

Before the meeting even began, FIGG’s engineers had ordered the tightening of steel bars running through the cracking truss. It was supposed to be part of a "temporary" effort to lessen the load on the section of the bridge where cracks were developing.

A full repair was scheduled to begin weeks later, according to the minutes, after another section of the bridge, called the back span, was built over the canal just north of the cracking.

"FIGG mentioned that no repairs should be done now. Once back span is there, Member 11 force will decrease, then repair can begin,” the minutes state. Member 11 is the diagonal truss containing the post-tension bars that were being tightened when the failure occurred.

When a participant from Bolton Perez & Associates (BP&A), the company hired by FIU to oversee construction engineering and inspection, asked whether temporary shoring was needed during the repairs, "FIGG responded that it was not necessary," according to the minutes.

In court pleadings, FIGG has challenged the accuracy of the minutes, prepared by BP&A for its client, FIU. While FIGG sent its own version of events to the National Transportation Safety Board, it has not released them publicly.

In a statement Monday accompanied by the release of the minutes and other records, FDOT Secretary Kevin Thibault said, "The Department has been working with the NTSB to proactively get the restriction (on releasing public records) lifted. We support full transparency by providing all documents related to the March 2018 tragedy that impacted the South Florida community and our entire state."

"Lives were lost and other lives have been changed forever, and we know these families, as well as the citizens of Florida, deserve answers and want closure,” he said. “While we have worked with NTSB allowing for the release of public records that have been requested by the media related to FIU bridge, the Department will wait to comment further until the NTSB releases the final report. In the weeks to come, the many court cases and other various investigations will be on-going and we want to be respectful of those processes, and the families directly impacted by this tragedy."

In all, 13 people are listed as attending the meeting: three from the general contractor, MCM, including the project manager and superintendent; two from FIU; three FIGG engineers (one by telephone); FDOT’s coordinator on the project; and four people from BP&A.

They watched a PowerPoint presentation by FIGG explaining how it designed the "temporary construction loading condition and temporary mechanism" to lessen the load near where cracks were forming, the minutes state.

When FIGG completed its PowerPoint presentation, which included detailed calculations of the loads it projected would result from its repair plan, the questions began.

FIU asked its construction engineering and inspection consultant, BP&A, what it thought about the FIGG presentation.

"At this point we cannot comment, will follow up on this request and expedite in 2-3 days,” the minutes quote a BP&A employee as answering.

But the tightening of the post-tension bars – the first step in adjusting the load on the bridge prior to repairs -- would not wait for days.

A crew from Structural Technologies, a subcontractor, had already been summoned to the site and was preparing at that moment to carry out FIGG’s instructions to add tension to the bars inside Member 11.

FDOT’s representative at the meeting, Alfredo Reyna, requested “a copy of FIGG analysis presentation to give to their structural group.” It was the same FDOT structural group that expressed concerns about the bridge design from its inception, especially the potential for cracking.

The FDOT engineer in that group overseeing the bridge, Tom Andres, was left a voicemail on March 13, two days before the bridge collapsed, by FIGG’s chief engineer, Denney Pate, informing him of the cracks.

FDOT falsely claimed he did not get the message until Friday, March 16 -- the day after the collapse -- because he was out of the office until then. In fact, NBC6 Investigators first revealed, Andres was in the office the morning of the collapse. FDOT now says, while he was in the office, he didn’t listen to the voicemail until the day after the bridge collapsed. FDOT says it has no record proving exactly when Andres retrieved the voicemail.

The minutes of the March 15 meeting suggest some dissension and concern among those present.

At one point, after FIGG’s predictions about the effects of the planned repairs were discussed at length, FIGG noted some diagonal cracking was predicted by its analysis.

Then someone from FIU chimed in to FIGG: "Nothing predicted this cracking."

Reyna, FDOT’s coordinator, then asked FIGG, “Are you going to continue to figure out why it happened?”

FIGG’s response: All we "know is that it just happened."

MCM then asked if there would be further inspection inside the cracks, which photos show had grown to six inches deep in the area where diagonal Member 11 met the vertical Member 12 at the north end.

"FIGG answered that they don’t want to core concrete out” – that is, drill into the cracked areas to determine the extent of the cracks within the concrete. “They want to move forward and seal cracks before being covered,” the minutes state.

Bolton Perez & Associates again raised concerns about the cracks, confirming they had increased in length or depth each day since the bridge was lifted from its roadside construction site, rotated across the then-closed road and placed on supports on the morning of March 10. Negligence lawsuits filed against companies involved in the project allege a Structural employee was so concerned about cracking on March 10, he texted photos of the cracks to his company.

BP&A asked FIGG and MCM if there will be "a crack monitoring plan," according to the minutes. BP&A “had been monitoring cracks and insisted that FIGG/MCM perform the crack monitoring as well. FIGG/MCM had no response."

Toward the end of the meeting, it was again BP&A that seemed most concerned about what was happening – and the lack of analysis regarding what was being proposed to happen in the future.

BP&A asked the FIGG representatives if they were going to stay to watch the post-tensioning procedure, and FIGG said they would not. “FIGG was going back (to its headquarters in Tallahassee) right after this presentation because they had work to do on this,” the minutes state.

FIGG’s PowerPoint ended with a conclusion about its repair design, called a strut-and-tie: "Based on conservative calculations, it is concluded that the design meets LRFD (load and resistance factor design) strength requirement for this temporary condition … and therefore, there is no safety concerns relative to the observed cracks and minor spalls." Spalling occurs when concrete breaks away from the rest of the structure, something photos show occurring near the cracks.

After requesting a copy of the PowerPoint, BP&A asked FIGG if its plan had been "peer reviewed” – double-checked by other engineers to assure assumptions and calculations are correct. BP&A “requested that it wanted more eyes on this and that the more eyes on this, the better. FIGG concurred."

But while those concerns were focused on the repair effort that was to take place weeks later, there was little discussion of the post-tensioning procedure that was about to take place just outside the trailer where they were meeting.

In fact, BP&A, as of the meeting, had not yet seen the exact procedure FIGG was ordering the Structural Technologies crew to do.

From the minutes: BP&A asks FIGG and MCM to provide “the stressing procedure that will be performed on 3/15/18.”

Again: this meeting was being held on the morning of 3/15/18.

MCM replied it will provide it to BP&A, but then "clarified that (Structural) was currently on site to perform the stressing operation with the corresponding stressing procedure."

There is no mention in the minutes of anyone objecting to the re-stressing procedure going forward at that point.

Nor was there much discussion about a temporary alteration FIGG had ordered two days earlier, after MCM sent FIGG photographs of the cracking. FIGG "instructed MCM to install … temporary shims in the pylon base below member 12,” the minutes state. Member 12 was the vertical support that rested on a pylon at the north end of the 174-foot-long main span.

Again, it was BP&A that appears to have expressed the most urgency about the situation, asking MCM if it was “planning on rushing the completion of construction” of the back span and a pylon diaphragm that FIGG said must be completed before it moved to the final phase of its repair plan.

"MCM responded that they are following the schedule but that they will expedite the construction of them," the minutes state.

According to the minutes the following people attended the meeting:

From FIGG: chief engineer on the project, Denney Pate; regional director Dwight Dempsey (by telephone); bridge engineer Eddy Leon;

From MCM: project manager Rodrigo Isaza; superintendent Ernie Hernandez; Pedro Cortes;

From FDOT: Alfredo Reyna, coordinator for FIU bridge, a Local Agency Project;

From FIU: associate vice president of facilities management John Cal; director of facilities construction Patrick Meagher;

From Bolton, Perez & Associates: senior project engineer Jose Morales; project administrator Rafael Urdaneta; construction engineer Carlos Chapman, who would be injured hours later when the bridge collapsed; and inspector Maria Christina Acosta.

Photo Credit: NBC 6 This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. Engineers Dismissed Crack Concerns on Morning of FIU Bridge Collapse published first on Miami News

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kacydeneen · 6 years

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Six Updates on the FIU Bridge Collapse Investigation

It’s been five and a half months since the FIU bridge collapsed, killing six people.

But federal and state officials have imposed an almost-total blackout on information – information that is usually public in Florida.

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Now, as lawsuits are filed and some information begins to dribble out, we are learning a few more things about what happened and what will happen next.

Here are six recent developments:

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1) NTSB STATEMENT IN DOUBT

Video released from FIU contradicts what the NTSB reported about work being done just before the collapse of the pedestrian bridge. In a March 21 news release, the agency said: “The investigative team has confirmed that workers were adjusting tension on the two tensioning rods located in the diagonal member at the north end of the span when the bridge collapsed. They had done this same work earlier at the south end, moved to the north side, and had adjusted one rod. They were working on the second rod when the span failed and collapsed.”

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Watch this time lapsed video that begins at sunrise on Thursday March 15 and ends with the collapse at 1:47 p.m. and you can clearly see the workers had only been working on the north side of the span before it collapsed. It appears they never restressed the rods on the south side on that day – and a review of previous days’ video shows no work there, either. NTSB would not comment on the differences between their statement and what the video shows.

2) MISSING PIECES

A circuit court judge is allowing parties to investigate circumstances surrounding the destruction of 26 steel rods that had been flagged for preservation by one of the defendants during a court-ordered inspection of the job site in July. An attorney for one of the defendants said he believed he had “tagged” for preservation both a nut and the 26 steel rods accompanying it. But the rods were removed in August by representatives of Structural Technologies – a defendant which, among other tasks, used steel rods for post tensioning. Earlier this month, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey granted a motion allowing an inquiry to go forward, but cautioned, “I don’t know whether the rods are important or not… This could’ve been a mistake.” But if it turns out a party intentionally destroyed what it should have known could be key evidence, she could instruct any future jury to draw "adverse inferences” based on that party’s conduct – in other words, to assume bad motive for destroying evidence.

Structural’s lawyer would not comment on the matter, but said in court the yellow tag was attached only to the nut and, after consulting with a Munilla employee in charge of the site, Structural was told it could remove the rods, leaving behind the nut. The rods are 1 ¾ inches thick – the same size as those being tightened in the truss that failed, so they could be significant, one lawyer argued. The NTSB also collected rods of that size from the site and tested them, finding no issues with the materials, the agency said. The video below shows what the nut and rods looked like after the nut was tagged for preservation and before the rods were removed. It also shows a document – an evidence custody form prepared at the site – identifying the material to be preserved as “26 threaded steel rods w/bolts.”

3) FOUR-HOUR GAP IN VIDEO

FIU had at least three cameras trained on the construction site round the clock, capturing time lapse video of what was to be the campus’ showcase pedestrian bridge. But the camera with the most direct view of the north side of the span – the side that had cracked and failed – is missing about four hours of coverage on the morning of Monday March 12. When it comes back on, a backhoe is seen working to deepen the canal just north of the pier that is holding the deck and canopy that would collapse three days later. The backhoe is seen operating there during work hours from Monday through the time of the collapse. No record yet made public reveals who may have ordered that work to be done and what impact, if any, it had on what happened.

This video shows the camera shutting off early Monday morning and coming back later that day. FIU said it did not redact any video, so it may have been a technical malfunction that caused the gap.

4) VIDEO FILLS IN TIMELINE

The time lapse video from March 15 provides the best record made public so far of when events occurred on the bridge that day.

FDOT, FIU and others have refused to release records that could reveal exactly what was said about the cracks at a 9 a.m. meeting among Figg, Munilla, FIU and FDOT representatives.

The video shows a group of people around 8 a.m., paying close attention to the cracked area at the north end of the bridge. It also shows workers then getting onto the canopy.

By 9 a.m – as the meeting convened in the Munilla construction trailer in the upper right of the video -- there is almost no one on the bridge for about a half hour.

At around 9:30 the crane that would be used to lift equipment for the re-tensioning arrives.

By 10:40 workers are back up on the canopy working on the northernmost tension bars.

And at 1:47 it collapses.

5) NEW PLANS FOUND AMID DEBRIS

The judge has been informed that, amid all the debris at the collapse site, something very important may have been found during a June 29 pre-inspection: an oversized set of plans that appeared to reflect the structure as it was built. They were found amid a crushed truss and are “unique,” with “handwritten notes that may be of interest to the parties,” a lawyer for Munilla informed all the other lawyers on Aug. 1. There are about 150 pages -- “oversized, dirty … a mess … ripped” and damaged from being out in the elements, the lawyer told judge Bailey. The plans were taken to the MCM trailer and later moved to the lawyer’s law firm’s office. They will be made available, perhaps in digital format, for all parties to review, once NTSB allows the plans to be produced in the litigation.

6) INSURANCE COMPANIES SUE TO LIMIT EXPOSURE

Two of the most prominent defendants in the 16 wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits filed so far are also being sued by their insurers, The Travelers and The Phoenix Insurance Company. The insurers want a judge to rule that the general commercial liability polices taken out by Figg Bridge Engineers and Bolton Perez & Associates do not cover any damages due to the bridge collapse. Those policies’ coverages total $12 million for Figg and $5 million for Bolton Perez.

Instead, the insurers claim, the allegations would be covered by professional services liability policies, which have much lower limits: $5 million for Figg and $1 million for Bolton Perez.

The most significant defendant, the general contractor Munilla Construction Management, has $37 million in liability coverage and $5 million for professional service claims – and none of its insurers has yet sued to limit their exposure on any of those policies, according to federal court records.

As the personal injury cases move forward, the costs are beginning to come into view; $32,500 for tagging and segregating potential evidence from the site; $5,000 to put the materials into containers; $24,000 to remove unwanted debris; perhaps $120,000 a year to store it all. All of that will pale in comparison to what some lawyers estimate could be more than $100 million in damages to the victims and their survivors, when it’s all said and done.

Six Updates on the FIU Bridge Collapse Investigation published first on Miami News

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