News Feb 4, 2015 at 4:20 pm

How the Morrison Bridge Became Such an Expensive, Dangerous Mess

Comments

1
If I were this reporter's news editor, I'd be very worried about him taking my job based on reporting like this.
2
Wait, Babygorilla... he is!
3
You don't say:)

Well earned career advancements for both of you guys. Congrats!
4
This is why you should over-engineer stuff, not under. Sure, you're gonna pay more upfront but in the long run it will be astronomically cheaper.
5
Thanks, Denis. Good article. What I hope is now going to happen is that the County can separate this shitstorm from the fact that they need to move forward NOW with a new bridge project. It's only a matter of time before the other lanes deteriorate to the same conditions as the one currently closed. Open metal grating may be the only solution at this point - I can't see justifying using another technology after this.
6
This superb reconstruction of the latest scam to reduce Oregonians and especially Multnomahns to laissez faire losers at the hidden hands of market forces and either inept or corrupt government puts to shame the shoddy reconstruction of the Morrison Bridge. VanderHart's work should be held up as an example for the Center of Public Integrity. ProPublica or http://consortiumnews.com/ cub reporters as that's where most of the investigative reporting now gets jobbed out by the sleekly streamlined corporate media and every-other-day daily advertisers like the "O." Old School J-schools used to teach this stuff until The Great Disruption took students' curiosity away along with any hope of a sustainable trade in journalism. Who needs journalism when we have social media!

Wondering whether in any of the reports the MERCURY has run going back to 2013 on this Morrison Bridge polymer surfacing fiasco there was any consultation with faculty or other staff at PSU's Maseeh College of Engineering and in particular the Mechanical and Materials Engineering staff? The quotes pulled from the out-of-state contractor Conway and the North Carolina materials vendor ZellComp along with their sub-contracted Virginia fabrication and manufacturer Strongwell along with the comments from the Florida Department of Transportation source(s) lack any grounding in civil or materials engineering. In fact only the latter source(s) can be considered to be free of conflicts of interest. Good of your intrepid investigative reporter to note the county's big plate of bridges to maintain, with a new one coming online this coming September. What sort of experimental polymers or other illustrations of the virtues of innovation and risk-taking has the Tillicum Bike, Bus & Rail Bridge in store for us? What about the replacement for the Sellwood Bridge that Clackamas voters and their reps claim falls beyond the purview of their limited liability model of county government?

Gotta love the Pynchonian named Strongwell LLC Vice President Glenn Barefoot offering few substantive responses to the MERCURY, but lawdy can he write an internal memo under-girded with the most practical PR considerations and cosmetic epoxy. One can envision Strongwell exec Barefoot stepping lightly over his firm's faulty polymer fabricated re-surfacing of the Morrison Bridge, turning an ankle perhaps in one of the crazes as a montage of the Minneapolis Mississippi River bridge collapse back in August of 2007 is Power Point-ed to Strongwell's more cautious staff. But then, caution doesn't make any serious money, as MARKETPLACE and SMART MONEY and most of OPB's other piped-in programs underwritten by the foundations in bid-net to propagandize for Risk & Innovation (as long as you shift the risk to the taxpayer and innovate using OPM - other people's money). Snake-oil was the American Way long before Risk & Innovation was all that we had left to offer the manufacturing giants of the world to whom we now hawk our consulting and bundling services.

Keep on doing and keeping the flim-flammers real!
The MERC oughta go daily!!!!!!!!
We'll see if all the winning 'bidders' on the Morrison Bridge Project provided any better Warranty Protection than did California's ORACLE when they sold us Oregonians our Cover Oregon web-site! Funny thing is that PSU's Maseeh College of Engineering also offers advanced degrees and conducts corporate-underwritten research for its Colleges of Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Engineering and Tech Management!
(Of course I doubt Multnomah County supervisors could afford the tuition)
Mitchito
7
Excellent job describing a very complicated situation!
8
This is very good reporting about one of those situations where mistakes kept being piled onto other mistakes – and people on both coasts decided to keep their heads low and shuffle off responsibility to other organizations, hoping things wouldn't come back and bite them. But they did. I hope this especially gets more attention focused on the negligent cost-cutting at both ZellComp and Strongwell.

If there are follow-up articles (and I hope there are), I'd like to hear more about this element, which arguable started the whole fiasco: "County officials had quietly planned to scrap the traditional strategy of soliciting bids then choosing among the cheapest ones received. Instead, they wanted to sign with another company they'd deemed fit for the work. But ZellComp raised a fuss—forcing a bid process and winning the job." So – how exactly did a corporation in North Carolina bully Multnomah County into having no choice but to choose them for a project? Were the county's hands somehow legally tied? And how can we make sure situations like that don't happen again? Sometimes the cheapest bid isn't the best one – or even really the cheapest – as we've definitely seen here.
9
This is very good reporting about one of those situations where mistakes kept being piled onto other mistakes – and people on both coasts decided to keep their heads low and shuffle off responsibility to other organizations, hoping things wouldn't come back and bite them. But they did. I hope this especially gets more attention focused on the cost-cutting at both ZellComp and Strongwell.

If there are follow-up articles (and I hope there are), I'd like to hear more about this element, which arguably started the whole fiasco: "County officials had quietly planned to scrap the traditional strategy of soliciting bids then choosing among the cheapest ones received. Instead, they wanted to sign with another company they'd deemed fit for the work. But ZellComp raised a fuss—forcing a bid process and winning the job."

So – how exactly did a corporation in North Carolina bully Multnomah County into having no choice but to choose them for a project? Were the county's hands somehow legally tied? And how can we make sure situations like that don't happen again? Often the cheapest bid isn't the best one – or even truly the cheapest – as we've definitely seen here.
10
(sorry for double comment, feel free to delete)
11
Just put it back the way it was in the first place. Drivers manged to handle the steel grating well enough for decades. Lower the speed limit.
12
Our county is being dumber than anywhere in Florida!? That is so appalling I don't even know what to say right now...
13
I'm not a lawyer, but isn't this criminal fraud?

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.