California: Bay Bridge’s troubled China connection

How Caltrans’ choice of an inexperienced company left structural doubts and cost taxpayers
Charles Piller cpiller@sacbee.com Sunday, June 8, 2014


Beneath the suspension span. The bridge tower, seen through gaps between the roadway girders, holds up 28 girders and their connecting crossbeams, some of which suffered weld cracks during construction.


The Chinese company hired to build key parts of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge had never built a bridge. Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery Co. Ltd., after all, was a manufacturer of giant cranes for container ports...

...The litany of Bay Bridge problems exposed in recent years by The Sacramento Bee and others includes suspect foundation concrete, broken anchor rods and rust on the suspension span’s main cable. Yet beyond those investigative findings, bridge engineers say, the decision to hire ZPMC will haunt the new span and the traveling public for generations to come..

...Caltrans asked an outside expert to assess whether ZPMC could do the job, and Jim Merrill, a senior materials contractor for the bridge project, gave the company a “contingent pass.” He also labeled it “high risk.” Among other problems, ZPMC didn’t have enough qualified welders or inspectors, the audit noted, and routinely welded in the rain, a basic error that often causes defects....

...Caltrans employees and U.S. contractors who supervised the job lived fulltime in Shanghai, and top officials flew there often. Tony Anziano, toll bridge program manager, alone spent more than $300,000 on travel...

Full article: http://www.sacbee.com/static/sinclair/sinclair.jquery/baybridge/index.html

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Maybe one day the US will be able to build its own bridges again. Or, maybe not.