(SDOT bridge-top camera image, noontime today)
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
As part of the West Seattle Bridge repair contract, weekly progress reports are required. In late January, we asked SDOT for those reports; they told us our request had to go through the city’s public-disclosure-request system, which subsequently estimated our request would take a month to fulfill. It did. This week we received minutes from the first nine weekly progress meetings, from November 23rd through January 18th.
The documents show that these meetings are held at 8 am Tuesdays. The reports, usually two to three pages long, are not detailed, and the ones we’ve received don’t reveal anything dramatic, but there are a few points of interest. Most notable is that the concrete-drivers strike first turns up in the January 11th report, with this notation:
Ongoing Teamsters strike against the concrete suppliers locally has shut down many jobsites. While there are no impacts to the project yet, concern for concrete availability once suppliers are allowed to deliver again. Concrete suppliers will address in order of priority based on volume. Given the lower volume of the project, concerns with meeting the schedule deadlines are being monitored and schedule options are being explored to condense the concrete delivery timeframe.
That note appeared four weeks before Mayor Bruce Harrell stood before media crews and warned that the strike would delay the bridge reopening if concrete didn’t become available by February 20th.
Other notes of interest include a COVID outbreak reported among the bridge crew in the January 18th report – three confirmed cases and one suspected case; the report adds that “all were fully vaccinated.” From mid-December to mid-January, there were multiple mentions of logistics for the raising of the bridge work platforms.
(WSB photo, January 29th, just before second half of second platform went up)
They were at one point expected to be hoisted in December, but instead went up in January; progress-meeting minutes indicate that working with the railroad took extra time – “railroad comments” were cited as a reason for a resubmittal of documents related to the hoisting.
The reports are on forms with a preset list of discussion topics, and lists of invitees/attendees, from repair contractor Kraemer North America, SDOT, consultant (and repair designer) WSP, and in addition to SDOT’s in-house communicators, representatives of communications consultant Stepherson and Associates. We have put in public-disclosure requests for the weekly reports filed since the ones we received, and are waiting for estimates on how long that’ll take.
P.S. As for what’s happening now with the bridge, work continues, minus concrete. Last week, SDOT told the West Seattle Transportation Coalition they still hope to be able to reopen the bridge in mid-2022.
On the strike front, the drivers’ union, Teamsters Local 174, says it wants to bargain individually with the concrete suppliers; the suppliers responded with a statement today accusing the drivers of trying to “bully the construction industry.”
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