City staff accused of keeping bridge problem away from council

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This article was published 05/04/2016 (3508 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The city lawsuit against an engineering firm linked to problems with the new Sturgeon Creek bridge was initiated by the city’s insurance company but a councillor said she’s concerned elected officials were not informed about the case or the problems with the bridge.

Coun. Janice Lukes, chairwoman of the public works committee, said she and other elected officials were surprised by the lawsuit because city staff weren’t involved in taking the firm to court and had not been aware of the problem with the bridge.

“We have insurance on projects and so it’s the insurance company that is dealing with this issue,” Lukes (South Winnipeg-St. Norbert) said Tuesday following a meeting of the public works committee.

A lawsuit in the city’s name was filed with court March 29 alleging Stantec Engineering was responsible for the March 2014 collapse of an earthen wall that supported the superstructure of the Sturgeon Creek bridge on Sturgeon Road.

The document alleges the city incurred damages of approximately $2.2 million. Court documents state the city constructed an earthen wall, at Stantec’s direction, that turned out to be built on top of an old watermain. The suit alleges the pressure from the wall on the watermain caused the surrounding soil to settle, which led to the watermain breaking and a “significant portion of the (wall) to be washed out.”

While problems with the new bridge are well known — the concrete road deck had to be rebuilt because of premature deterioration — there have never been public reports to the standing committees of finance or public works about the wall collapse and the impact on the project.

News of the lawsuit and the reasons for it caught Lukes and other councillors by surprise this week.

“How many times have I said this — it’s not acceptable,” a clearly frustrated Luke said Tuesday. “We should be informed. We are here to provide oversight. It’s difficult to provide oversight when you’re not informed on things.”

Public works director Lester Deane said the integrity of the bridge was never at risk. He said even though the lawsuit said the wall supported the superstructure of the new bridge, the bridge was never in jeopardy of collapsing and there was no threat to the public.

“It’s absolutely structurally sound,” Deane said. “We wouldn’t be putting any traffic or even people over the bridge if we thought there was a risk to the public.”

Deane said both lanes of the bridge were shut when the watermain break occurred and the bridge and supporting infrastructure inspected.

“After the assessment, we realized it was safe to open to traffic,” Deane said. “We shut off the waterline, then we did an assessment of the walls and the risk of a sub-grade failure. We felt there was minimal risk, so we kept the roadway in service until we were able to affect repairs.”

A new underground waterline was installed in a different location, Deane said, and the supporting wall repaired.

Deane, who was manager of engineering at the time of the wall collapse, said councillors weren’t informed because the problem wasn’t considered serious enough to bring to their attention.

“Things happen on projects,” Deane said. “We don’t report on everything.”

Lukes said Tuesday she had been quickly briefed on the situation by COO Michael Jack following the morning’s committee meeting. She said even though city officials didn’t initiate the lawsuit, she and other councillors should have been informed about the collapse of the wall and what city officials had done to deal with that situation.

The administration is “looking at the process at how they make councillors aware of situations that have occurred,” Lukes told reporters, adding it’s is an ongoing problem with senior administrators.

“Like I’ve said many times before, we have communication problems at the city,” Lukes said. The public demands answers from elected officials when problems with civic projects arise, she said, and too many times councillors simply aren’t aware of the problems.

“We’ve got a new CAO and a COO, this is their job (to keep councillors informed),” Lukes said. “It’s challenging to get information out of the departments.

“There seems to be a communication problem that hopefully our CAO is working on.”

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca