More Big Dig Worries

Yesterday Governor Romney closed the east side of the Ted Williams Tunnel. It uses the same type bolts as the tunnel where the ceiling collapsed. Last week the head of the Mass. Turnpike Commission, which oversaw the Big Dig, said the tunnel was safe. Romney says he's not sure and will err on the side of safety.

Here's an interesting graphic from the Governor's office via the Boston Globe.

More on the fiasco that is The Big Dig

240 loose ceiling tile fixtures. The National Transportation Safety Board will be coming. Despite grossing $4 billion on its part of The Big Dig, Modern Continental Construction had to be rescued from bankruptcy via a merger.

Chickens coming home to roost

Eileen McNamara has a good column in today's Globe about Monday's Big Dig calamity.

A decade ago, former state inspector general Robert Cerasoli warned of safety concerns with the tunnels and the lax state oversight of Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff , the international engineering consortium that ran the project.

Last year, Edward M. Ginsburg , the retired Middlesex probate judge hired by the Turnpike Authority to recover damages, accused project managers of hiding information from his investigators and chastised state officials for having too cozy a relationship with contractors. ``They were all married to each other," he said after being fired for his efforts.

``My feeling was that it was not being taken care of," Ginsburg said last year. ``I mean it was going to be ignored or papered over. I just didn't think that was appropriate. And I wasn't going to be responsible for someone getting killed if one of those walls gave out again."

I doubt that there will be many people using the tunnel today. The traffic jams in Boston should be horrendous.

Then, in the same issue, Joan Vennochi equates the state's actions with the government actions re Katrina.

FOR POLITICIANS across America, Hurricane Katrina taught two valuable lessons.

When disaster strikes, return swiftly from vacation. Then, fire an underling.

Yesterday, Governor Mitt Romney followed the post-Katrina political guidebook. He interrupted his vacation. And he announced his intention to fire Matthew Amorello, the chairman and chief executive of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.

Late Monday night, Milena Del Valle was killed when concrete ceiling tiles fell from the Ted Williams Tunnel connector. On Tuesday, Romney was back at the State House, trying to hang all of the blame for the Big Dig tunnel disaster around someone else's neck.

The governor's upper lip was uncharacteristically wet with sweat -- with good reason. He and his presidential ambitions were unexpectedly on the hot seat.

Update as of 3 p.m.
From the Globe:

Inspectors have already found 60 more problem areas in the eastbound lanes of the connector, which links the Massachusetts Turnpike with the Ted Williams Tunnel. Crews are still checking the westbound lanes.

Update 2 at 8:30 pm
From the Globe:

When anchor bolts gave way Monday night, 12-tons of ceiling tiles crashed into the tunnel, killing Milena Del Valle, 38, of Jamaica Plain.

“The problem with the anchor bolts was identified in the fall of 1999,” said Reilly, whose office has launched a negligent manslaughter investigation. “It was not only identified, but there was a plan to address that problem.”

Five of the anchor bolts gave way in the 1999 study, Reilly said, referencing documents unearthed during the probe by his office. Investigators are trying to determine what was done with the plan formulated to fix the problem.

It really is BIG

Everything about Boston's "Big Dig" seems to be on a scale that we mortals cannot imagine. The contractor has asked the state for $500,000 to copy documents requested by investigators. At a penny a page, that's 50,000,000 pages to be copied!

Is it cursed?

The Thomas P. O'Neill Tunnel, aka "The Big Dig", will likely go down in history as not only one of the largest construction projects in America but also the one plagued with many, many problems.

A couple of years ago water began to seep into the tunnel. The contractors vowed to stop the seepage. They did make some strides, but, it looks as though the strides have come up short. Today, 2,000,000 gallons of water are pumped from the tunnel every month. This is 18% above last year's monthly pumping.

It's just doomed

It sounds as though the Big Dig will never be free of leaks. Currently, 2,00,000 gallons of water are pumped out of the tunnel monthly, 800,000 of those are from leaks, the rest from rainwater. Where there were three serious leaks in 2006 when the state took over, now there are 237 serious leaks (out of 670 total leaks). But, authorities tell us not to worry as it would take twenty-five years of leaks before the tunnel was unusable.

Blame Everybody

That's what the National Transportation Safety Board did with its report on The Big Dig ceiling collapse. They blamed the designer of the ceiling, the company that supplied the bolts for the ceiling, the Turnpike and the contractors for not really investigating the cause of loose bolt when the tunnel was being built.

Will it ever be finished?

"It" is the Big Dig, a road/tunnel/bridge system that was supposed to be done years ago. It's not. In fact, there are at least 2,000 maintenance items to fix. I assume that by the time the 2,000 get fixed there will be more. If you want to review some of the history, click here.

Is $458,000,000 enough?

That's what the builders of the Big Dig in Boston have agreed to pay for their incompetence. Interestingly, $100,000,000 of it will immediately go to fixing existing defects. Has this project been entered in the Guinness Book of Records yet?

S**t on the ceiling

The new Baghdad Police College does have human waste dripping from the ceilings and floors that are not quite flat and a room called the "rain forest" because of the water dripping there. Parsons Corp., the builder of the college as well as thirteen other projects classified as having shoddy work, claims it was the fault of the Iraqi subcontractors. "Not my fault" is the new mantra for $3 billion construction companies.

By the way, Parsons was also a contractor on the Big Dig.

When will it re-open?

Engineers keep discovering more problems with the Big Dig tunnels. They won't give an estimated date as to when everything will be fixed. All they'll say now is "several months". They've learned to be more cautious than the former chirman of the MTA who said things would be fixed in six weeks.

Jinxed?

Today's Boston Globe reports of a memo received from the primary contractor of The Big Dig, Bechtel/Parsons Brinkerhoff, warning that the recent testing may have permanently damaged the bolts that were tested. Is Bechtel/Parsons trying to cover their arse? Or, should there be a genuine concern? As usual, the MTA says everything is okay.

Irony of ironies

Tip O'Neill was such a major sponsor of The Big Dig that one of the tunnels is named after him. Unfortunately, as we are well aware, the construction and the management of the construction of that tunnel was not the best. Bechtel Corp., as the primary contractor, bears the brunt of the blame. Come to find out that O'Neill's son, who is also named Thomas P., is one of the lobbyists for Bechtel.

O'Neill fils has represented the company for a while. Since Bechtel was also a customer of mine, I can understand why he would have done so. Twenty-five years ago when I sold some software to the company, they were known as a top-notch engineering firm and they paid their bills on time. So, they were good as a reference and good for the cash flow.

Obviously, Bechtel has changed considerably. They not only screwed up in Boston, but it appears that they have screwed up in Iraq and who knows where else. It's sad.

Another black mark for Bechtel

Bechtel Corporation, a leading engineering firm, was the primary contractor on Boston's Big Dig. If you've been following my postings on that subject, you'll agree that they did a really crappy job - over budget, late and work that resulted in one death, several floods and other problems. Now comes word from Iraq of similar management problems.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, has released his latest audit. This one covers AID and its primary contractor, Bechtel. Put simply, some of the reports filed by AID were deliberately misleading, primarily as to the allocation of costs. For example, the construction budget for a hospital was $50,000,000, however the cost will approach $98,000,000. Yet, AID told Congress that the cost would be $50,000,000. Another example: the direct cost of a building a power station was $6,600,000, the indirect cost was $27,600,000, or four times the direct costs. Conversely, an electricity project came in at $164,300,000 of direct costs and $1,400,000 of indirect costs, or less than 1% of direct costs. What game was AID playing?

It was not only dollars that were misallocated. In March Bechtel reported that the hospital project was nine months late; in April AID told Congress that there were no scheduling problems.

Today's number is 1454

That is the number of bolt hangers in the Big Dig tunnel that have problems, or so says Governor Romney.

The Attorney General says that there was a dispute as to the safety of these hangers going back to 1999.

For the history

Today's Globe has quite complete coverage of the Big Dig fiasco.

Tip O'Neill must be rolling over in his grave

Last night part of the ceiling fell on a car traveling in the Ted Williams Tunnel, part of The Big Dig, which is formally named after Thomas P. O'Neill, longtime Speaker of the House and acknowledged by almost all as a "good guy". The car was crushed, a female passenger died, the driver is in the hospital.

This is not the first problem to occur with the most expensive single highway project to date, at $14.6 billion. Rocks fell from a vent in April 2005 and trapped five vehicles, including an ambulance. A very large chunk of cement fell in March of this year; inspectors found leaks in the fireproofing material in forty places. There have been several minor leaks since the official opening in 2003.