Bay Bridge critics

Caltrans muzzled Bay Bridge critics, report says

Bay Bridge engineers were pushed out or moved on after criticizing defects, committee finds

Jaxon Van Derbeken

Caltrans sought to silence engineers who voiced concerns about cost overruns or construction defects on the new Bay Bridge eastern span, forcing several of them from the project, according to an investigative report prepared for a state Senate committee.

Eight engineers who either worked for Caltrans or had contracts with the state agency had to leave their posts, as did a ninth who worked for the bridge's builder, according to the report released Thursday by the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee.

Several engineers criticized the quality of welding work on giant deck sections and tower components that began in 2007 at a factory in Shanghai, while others balked at costly change orders that they saw as benefiting the bridge's lead contractor.

Caltrans has said cracks were found in numerous welds in deck sections made by Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co. Ltd., known as ZPMC. But it says they were not a safety concern and that the welds have been repaired.

Engineers have said they fear lingering weld flaws could worsen over time, leading to cracks in the road decks. Doug Coe, one of the veteran engineers who has gone public about weld concerns, testified before the state Senate committee earlier this year that critics had their "heads chopped off."

Coe was one of the engineers Caltrans and the bridge's project manager, Tony Anziano, forced from the Bay Bridge job after they criticized work being done at ZPMC, a crane maker that had never built a bridge before, the state Senate report said. It said Anziano and the state agency appeared to have a policy of squelching dissent to speed up work on the long-delayed bridge, which at $6.4 billion came in $5 billion over budget.

Many cover-up charges

"This inquiry has uncovered too much testimony fueling the cover-up charge to ignore," said the report, written by former investigative journalist Roland De Wolk.

State Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, the committee's chairman and a candidate for Congress, said he was disappointed but not surprised by the findings.

"The final report just corroborates that things need to change at Caltrans," he said. "There is a culture there that doesn't like to be criticized - ever. As a worker told me: Caltrans goes after the troublemakers, not the trouble."

In response to the report, Caltrans denied that officials had retaliated against critics and said that at worst, disagreements among people working on the project showed that "better communication" was needed.

No war with contractor

Anziano told De Wolk that he reassigned Coe to avoid a war with the contractor and that he was not to blame when other engineers left on their own or were reassigned by their bosses.

One of the contract engineers who lost his post, Jim Merrill, wrote a detailed memo calling for the welding work to stop in March 2008 after inspectors at the Shanghai worksite found 100 cracks. The work continued, and a $40 million oversight contract that had gone to Merrill's MACTEC firm was not renewed.

Merrill testified before DeSaulnier's committee in January. So did Coe, whom Anziano transferred to the Antioch Bridge in September 2009 after Coe expressed concerns about cracks in welds on deck sections.

The state Senate committee report identifies seven other engineers who say they were forced from the bridge project, including Nathan Lindell, hired by lead contractor American Bridge/Fluor to both oversee ZPMC's work and build a database of nearly 1 million welds on the span.

'Messed up'

Soon after arriving in Shanghai, the report says, Lindell e-mailed a supervisor in January 2007 that the project could "spiral out of control" without stricter controls on welding quality. He said he had "never worked on a project that is this messed up so early in the process."

American Bridge/Fluor rejected his request for as many as 30 more inspectors to be sent to China, however, and Lindell said the company soon shunted him to a "software development role" and then let him go in 2009.

A veteran engineer brought in by Caltrans for project oversight, Keith Devonport, complained about problems in the deck and tower to Anziano in mid-2009, the Senate report said. In May 2010, Devonport was transferred off the bridge project, the report said. His bosses at the firm, Lim and Nascimento Engineering, told him that Caltrans officials thought he "complained too much," the report quotes him as saying.

Another contract engineer, Dave McClary, said he felt "benched" by Lim and Nascimento Engineering after he too complained about weld quality.

Quality secondary

John Kinsey, an engineer who did quality oversight for both Merrill's firm and the company that replaced it, Alta Vista Solutions, said he believed that staying on schedule "was trumping quality" when it came to the bridge welding. When he urged Caltrans to inspect welds more rigorously, he was reassigned to find apartments for fellow engineers in China, the report said.

Two Caltrans managers, Rick Morrow and Gary Purcell, are quoted as saying they were sidelined after they balked at costly change orders for work in China. Another Caltrans manager, Mike Forner, expressed concerns about weld flaws. All three said they felt pressured to leave and eventually did, the report said.

'Best for the project'

Anziano is quoted in the report as saying he invited anyone who disagreed with his calls to "go up the chain"' to bridge oversight officials "if they felt his decisions were wrong, but none did," the report said.

"On any project, big or small, a group of people are not going to be happy," Anziano was quoted as saying. "My job is not to be popular. ... It's to do what's best for the project."

In his response to the report, Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty said that "there could have been better communication amongst the team to ensure that all team members were aware of how decisions were made, and how and why issues were considered, reviewed and resolved. Failure to do that at a high level on a project this big with this many employees could lead to a sense of isolation in some cases, but that is not retaliation."

Dougherty noted that the California Highway Patrol is investigating allegations of retaliation against Caltrans critics, and said the agency is cooperating.