Hundreds of "questionable" girders used in construction of the Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway will be replaced, according to Windsor-West MPP Teresa Piruzza.
The announcement accompanies a supplemental report by a committee of independent experts.
“The Windsor Essex Mobility Group and Parkway Infrastructure Constructors announced that they were rejecting and replacing the 500 girders manufactured by their supplier,” said Ontario Minister of Infrastructure, Glen Murray in a statement. “I am pleased that WEMG/PIC has decided to do the right thing and take responsibility for the actions of its subcontractor.”
Of those 500 girders, 288 have already been installed along the parkway, according to the Windsor Essex Mobility Group.
The remaining 212 girders are currently being held in a storage lot will also be destroyed. Additionally, eight girders used on the Talbot Road Bridge will be replaced and destroyed.
“I am pleased that Windsor Essex Mobility Group and Parkway Infrastructure Constructors have decided to replace all the girders in question with new ones that will be built to code,” Piruzza said in a statement. “This decision is a result of the testing process that was agreed to between WEMG and Ministry of Transportation.”
A statement from the Windsor-Essex Mobility Group indicates the cost to replace the girders will not fall on the province or tax payers.
“The decision to reject the Freyssinet girders was made as a result of new information that came to light in the course of ongoing inspections and destructive testing,” said the mobility group in a statement.
“(Prestressed Systems Incorporated’s) Post Pour Inspection Reports disclose cracking of concrete at the ends of all of the 54 Tunnel T10B girders,” the supplemental report states. “Cracks in the web were as wide as 0.2 mm, and some of them were extending more than 600 mm in the end zone of the girders.”
PSI will now take over the building contract from Freyssinet.
“We wish to make it abundantly clear to the public and in particular the community of Windsor-Essex, that the 500 girders identified in the ministers statement today as being the girders rejected, and to be replaced, are not the girders produced by PSI,” Prestressed Systems Inc. said in a statement.
