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From the
Daily News:
A repair for the Brooklyn Bridge is $100 million over budget and the completion date has been pushed back yet again due to major cracks and holes discovered during the five years of work, the Daily News has learned.
Engineers discovered more than 3,000 new structural “flags” on the city’s most famous span that will increase the costs of fixes and improvements from $508 million to more than $600 million, according to documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Law request.
The 1,595-foot span was originally set to fully reopen this past April but was delayed for a year. Now, construction won’t be completed until some yet-to-be-disclosed date in 2016, according to city Department of Transportation records.
Scraping off old paint revealed holes, fraying cables and fissures on the iconic bridge that weren’t identifiable during the design phase of the project.
“During the normal course of the work, DOT identified thousands of additional steel repairs that were needed, which have required additional time and funding for the project,” said department spokeswoman Bonny Tsang.
City Hall has repeatedly authorized added expenditures since the massive rehab project was started in 2010. After scraping off old paint, inspectors discovered multiple fissures, holes and fraying cables, including 30 that were labeled red flags, documents show. Construction crews found cracks in steel beams as wide as 7 inches.
“These were not identifiable during the design process,” Tsang said.
The lead contractor, Skanska-Koch, says the delays are due to the added damage on the 132-year old bridge as well as the city’s reluctance to shut down the bridge for entire weekends.
The slowdown is also due to some unforeseen work stoppages, documents reveal.
From the
NY Times:
Forest City Ratner, the developer at the sprawling Atlantic Yards complex (renamed Pacific Park this month) in Brooklyn, boasted in 2012 that it had “cracked the code” sought by builders for more than a half-century, enabling the company to build residential, high-rise towers faster, better and more cheaply.
But a dark shadow was cast over those claims on Wednesday. Slow-moving work on the first tower shut down completely amid a battle over tens of millions of dollars in cost overruns between Forest City and its partner, Skanska, the giant Swedish construction company that is also the construction manager for the building.
This dispute over a high-profile development is unusually bitter and public, even for the typically rambunctious New York real estate industry.
Skanska on Wednesday unilaterally closed the factory in the Brooklyn Navy Yard where 157 workers assembled and built the steel-framed modules for the first of a planned 14 prefabricated apartment buildings, at Flatbush Avenue and Dean Street.
A day earlier, Skanska ceased work at the construction site, where the building rises to only 10 floors of its 32-story height, 21 months after work started.
From
Crains:
Federal prosecutors are investigating the billing practices of four more New York City construction giants, radio-station WNYC reported Monday morning. Turner Construction Company, Tishman Construction, Plaza Construction and Skanska USA are now under the FBI's magnifying glass. That news comes after charges filed against Bovis Lend Lease in April ultimately led to an admission of guilt and $56 million in fines.
A grand jury subpoena had been issued to a firm called AECOM, a parent company of Tishman, in December of last year, the report said. But a spokesman from Tishman declined to comment on the investigation.
Turner Construction Company issued a statement this afternoon confirming that they, among other major construction contractors, had been issued a subpoena by the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York last December.
Companies currently under investigation are involved in a number of large-scale public projects, including the extension of the 7th Avenue Subway line.
