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JEAN HELLERExpressway officials face a bill of $70-million to take foundations to a depth dismissed as "over-engineering."
TAMPA - As engineers designed the 6-mile elevated portion of the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway, one firm suggested that the bridge's underground supports should go deeper than planned.
But the company that designed those foundation columns rejected the notion as "over-engineering" and a waste of money.
Today, as officials of the Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority look at a possible bill of $70-million to fix the foundations, they say the columns indeed should have gone deeper - and in some cases wider - to begin with.
Figg Engineering, which designed the elevated portion of the road, suggested during the design phase that the foundations weren't deep enough, PerryDawn Brown, spokeswoman for the Expressway Authority, said Wednesday. But contractor URS Construction Services, which designed the foundations, "went through the process called value engineering and decided it wasn't worth it," Brown said.
Asked if, in retrospect, that was a wrong decision, Brown replied, "Yeah."
An independent specialist in bridge foundations has concluded that at least some of the pillars under the Crosstown aren't wide enough, and others not deep enough, to support the weight of the road adequately, Pat McCue, executive director of the Expressway Authority, said in an interview.
"If we have to fix all 197 of them, it could cost as much as $70-million," he said. "I'm really hoping they aren't all bad."
Gov. Jeb Bush said Wednesday that taxpayers would wind up paying some of the bill, whatever it is. "It's going to cost taxpayers in some fashion, in some form, a lot of money," Bush told WFLA-Ch. 8. He said even though the Expressway Authority will have to sort out the problem, the state would review options for repairing the bridge and paying for it.
According to McCue, the foundation specialist, Ardaman & Associates of Orlando, has concluded that the below-ground pillars that support the new lanes were "underdesigned" by URS.
"We believe they made some very serious, fundamental mistakes, specifically overstating the load-bearing capability these foundations have," McCue said. "When they made the geological calculations, they overstated the strength of the rock (under the pillars) and underdesigned the foundations."
Each of the foundations is 6 feet across, diagonally, and most extend about 60 feet into the ground. While they rest on rock, at least some of the rock formations are not thick enough or are themselves surrounded by soft, unstable earth, McCue said.
The foundation sites were tested by drilling core borings, which gave engineers a cross-section of earth to look at. The borings went several feet below the lowest point the foundations were to reach. But in at least some cases, they didn't go deep enough to find problems lurking below.
Ardaman has tested a number of sites by sinking seismic equipment on both sides of the concrete columns and taking readings that provide a more complete picture of soil conditions around and below the foundations.
McCue said the 6-foot diagonal shafts are the standard in the industry, but were not sufficient for this job.
Attorneys for the Expressway Authority and the Florida Department of Transportation are drafting a letter to be sent to URS, probably on Friday, giving the company a week to produce a plan to correct the problems.
Judith Lillard, a spokeswoman at URS headquarters in New York City, declined to comment.
"I'm afraid that we're simply not in a position to respond to a matter of potential litigation," Lillard said.
The $300-million toll road, originally set to open next year, is to feature three reversible lanes that will take commuters from the Brandon area to downtown Tampa in the morning and back again in the evening.
Asked why no one had double-checked the URS design plans for the foundations, McCue said no one thought it was necessary.
"This is the biggest engineering firm in the world," he said. "They signed and sealed this thing. They have advised my board and bond holders that they have made proper engineering decisions. There was no reason to doubt them."
This is not URS' first problem this year.
Trains run by Sound Transit in the Seattle-Tacoma area were pulled from a 1.3-mile segment of their tracks in January after the operator found that a new embankment carrying the tracks was sinking.
"We have a kind of soil out here that basically liquifies when it's vibrated, and that's the type of soil that was under the embankment," said Lee Somerstein, a spokesman for Sound Transit. "It's like putting a heavy hand on a plate of Jell-O. Press down and the Jell-O squirts out the sides. That's what was happening here."
Sound Transit spent $1.14-million to sink pilings that acted like a wall to hold the soil in place.
In June, Sound Transit sent letters to three contractors, including URS, its construction manager, notifying them of "design errors or omissions" and "construction engineering defects." It demanded that the companies fix the track and the embankment or Sound Transit would use other firms to do the work and bill the three of them. "We're in the dispute resolution process now," Somerstein said.
McCue said that if URS does not accept liability in the Crosstown case, "we will sue them."
"They can either agree to a fix, subject to the approval of Ardaman and FDOT, or they will disagree with the findings," McCue said. "But the clock is ticking. We've got a . . . project that's stopped, and every day it sits there it costs us money."
URS will be given "a reasonable period" to come to terms with the Expressway Authority or, McCue said, the board will be asked to approve a plan to have the work done by others.
"It won't sit there a year, I guarantee you that," he said. "We're going to get it done."
Already, McCue said, authority staff is putting together alternate sources of financing to pay for that contingency.
Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report.