City Councillor Ben Isitt noted on Facebook today,
“Major cost overruns are projected for the new Johnson Street Bridge — from $77-million to $93-million. Should Council opt for a simpler, more functional, more cost-effective design (that is strong enough to survive a major quake and accommodate light rail)? Let us know between now and Thursday: councillors@victoria.ca”
I decided I did have an opinion, and I started to draft a quick letter. The more I wrote, the grumpier I got. Basically, I asked myself, “At what point can this City just move ahead with something?” Honestly, I expect overruns. I expect by the time we are done, we’ll be lucky if it costs less than double the initial estimate. Here’s the letter I sent to council:
Victoria City Councillors,
I was annoyed (but not surprised) to learn that cost overruns for the replacement of the Johnson street bridge have already added $16M to the project before a contractor has been selected. I note that some of the cost overrun is due to the relocation of the TELUS lines — which may also have added costs later if it is shown (as has been suggested) that there was insufficient environmental control involved.
I fully expect there to be cost-overruns but I expect them to be due to materials costs or even fair wages for construction workers — not for accommodating a design that, let’s remember, was not the first choice of the public. That said, if there is one thing I have learned from working on IT projects, feature creep is the work of the devil and redesigning something in the middle of executing a project is a fool’s errand. I think council (and all stakeholders) have to stop flogging this dead horse; it’s been two and a half years since council decided to go with the rolling bascule design and a year and a half since the referendum sealed the Blue Bridge’s fate. Were these processes flawed? Probably. Does it matter? Only to the historians.
My dream would be that the new bridge can duplicate the functionality of the old bridge (including a rail portion) with the addition of dedicated bike access. However, I am used to the City of Victoria crushing my dreams.
At this point I just want the project to move ahead so we can finish it before the price of steel eclipses that of gold.
Regards,
Cheryl DeWolfe
Further reading: Johnson Street Bridge Project Update 12 Mar 2012
The clowns who pushed for the referendum added enough extra costs to this project already.
There can be other budget overruns based on missed items. This crew missed the necessity of paint. Have they included line items for:
– bridge grating (aka the bridge deck)
– rivets
– riveters (people to install rivets)
– holiday pay (for the staff: they will be hiring months of labour for many positions: have they factored that into the deliverable dates and labour availability?) — that alone would cause a 4% delay in delivery or a 4% hike in labour costs.
Have they considered that the bridge, being lower, will raise and lower more often for accommodate more vessels? If the motors need to be serviced, say, every 1000 raisings (eg. currently every 500-700 days); have they considered that would need servicing more aggressively (eg. every 200-300 days)?