Nipigon river bridge

[Nnev 70]

One lane traffic has been opened with a pace vehicle limiting speeds to 25 km/h

[therealfndeal 61]

Glad I'm working for tera north now lol two summers ago I helped build the roads to the bridge with bot 

[RH. 56]

Hopefully this bridge doesnt take as long as the james street swing bridge to get fixed.

[crazyctr 227]

thats what they get for using recycled chevys a little bit of road salt and the bolts rusted away

 

 

[fishman1 164]

The bolt company moved their manufacturing to mexico, beside the GMC truck plant! Hahaha

[levi64 72]

Pretty sad state of affairs.  No doubt its going to take a long while to get back to normal operation.. Makes you wonder how that could happen now days with all the checks that are suppose to be in place. Didn't last very long at all.

[levi64 72]

Good thing our Prime Minister didn't have to come back from his well deserved vacation in the Caribbean to deal with it. Poor fellow must be exhausted.

[fishman1 164]

4 hours ago, levi64 said:

Good thing our Prime Minister didn't  more importante to come back from his well deserved vacation in the Caribbean to deal with it. Poor fellow must be exhausted.

Why would he come back ?

What Is he going to do?

He oesnt even know where we are, besides, legalizing marijuana IS more IMportant

[scandiman 114]

No expert but it see to me that a cable suspension bridge should not lift even in the case of bolts breaking. That would suggest there was too much tension on the cables and as temps drop, the cables would contract some. Another example of what happens when you leave important decisions to those who live in the south 😐

[offroader 49]

That's what happens when you hire bridge designers/engineers from "Spain" to work in an environment that is foreign to them. "Frost" happens! 😜

[Iron Ranger 125]

Bridge designed and engineered in Spain. Expansion joints manufactured in China. What could possibly go wrong?

I take it was all about the lowest bid. You get what you pay for I guess.

[speckmaster 114]

Pay bananas...get monkeys!

[Gone8to1248 158]

1 hour ago, Iron Ranger said:

Bridge designed and engineered in Spain. Expansion joints manufactured in China. What could possibly go wrong?

I take it was all about the lowest bid. You get what you pay for I guess.

 

You forgot one. Directions on how to assemble written in Japanese.

[Gone8to1248 158]

I wonder who is going to pay to repair it? The Engineer whoe designed it? The Contractor who built it? Or the TAX Payer who had no say so in it? My bet is on the third choice!

[WalleyeWayne 137]

MOT says they're gonna cover the costs = you and my taxes are gonna cover the cost. Why the heck should the taxpayers be on the hook for repairs? Insurance company's for the Engineering and Construction groups should be responsible for any costs after the bridge was declared passable.

[Guest Trouter]

Rarely can you go back to the engineers, construction companies because the MOT undoubtedly had their inspectors sign off on each step of the process and deem it good to go, basically absolving the others of any responsibility.  

[arvey 154]

one thing I haven't heard from anybody involved like the politicians is them thanking their lucky stars nobody was killed. can you imagine if it happened during a heavy traffic time when people are bumper to bumper. the bridge is fixable a life isn't. as for who's responsible , it's the engineers who sign off on it. the question I have is the quality of the steel being used , for instance the bolts . the bolts should have a sheer strength in other words they should be able to take a certain amount of stress before breaking . second were they at their maximum without any room for some thing like this . when government money is involved in a project like this cost is a factor and did they go with the it's good enough to keep it within the budget .

[Gone8to1248 158]

Bridges like this project and other projects of it's kind take a lot of time to get off the ground. First someone say's we need a new bridge and the idea gets voted on. Then it gets sent out for Type of Bridge Design Quotes. Once the Design is approved then that gets sent out for bids. NOTE* What gets sent out is a Design Print and ALL MATERIAL SPECS of what has to be used in that Design. Here we are talking about everything that is used to build the bridge such as Concrete Specs,TYPE OF STEEL specs, The Manufacturing of ALL STEEL PARTS specs. All of this has to be Certified to meet print specs. The exact concrete mix to do what the designer meant for it to do. The steel make up to achieve the tensile strength and shear capabilities after heat treatments.

  Now say 5 contractors choose to bid on this project, they will send out prints to vendors who actually make the stuff used in building the bridge. Normally they send it to 3-5 vendors for each item and they in return bid on that item. All this takes time as much as 2-3 years.

  The bridge is now built and is working.Fast forward 2 years and the bridge fails! It had been inspected to meet the physical design while being built and passed. Meaning all dimensions were exactly what they were suppose to be including expansion joints, guide wire tension settings, placement and sizes of supports. now we are down to MATERIAL FAILURE. We are talking about steel parts that failed. That normally is the weak link.

 

   For EXAMPLE ONLY:

Only for a numbers sake lets say they used 1000 nuts and bolts to hold this bridge together. These 2 items had to be manufactured from steel that met a specific element make-up. All material has a element range that it has to fall between to be called that specific Steel number. Once manufactured they have to be Heat Treated to achieve the tensile strength,Hardness,and shear strength specified on the Print. This is also the hardest thing to verify because in order to check each nut and bolt it would have to be destroyed by cutting it in halve. Not practical. So what is done is you send 1005 parts out for heat treatment and they all get treated the same. They then take 5 parts at random and cut them and check for proper specs. Such as internal hardness, effective depth hardness. If they pass then what the certification says IS IF ALL MATERIAL SENT IN MEETS THIS MATERIAL SPECIFICATION THEN WHEN THE STATED HEAT TREATMENT IS APPLIED THIS IS WHAT YOU WILL GET.

 

   So those broken nuts and bolts will be sent out and tested to see just why they failed? Bad Steel or Bad Heat Treat?

 

   Avery was very right about one thing and that no lives were lost,someone was watching over the travelers that day.

[arvey 154]

gone81248

i'm no engineer but I did work construction as a millwright and I seen some foreign made junk installed . stuff that our tax dollars was paying for and you would think the quality would be better and on many occasions parts had to be reworked to fit .

[Gone8to1248 158]

Arvey

 

   I totally agree with you about a lot of foreign made stuff by some of the third world companies. Because of free trade agreements a lot of stuff gets in that should be rejected. But instead it has to be re-worked to fit properly. Yet some stuff is domestic made and has the same problem because of people who do the work aren't properly trained to do it because of a cost savings using cheaper help. That has happened down here many times and has put companies out of business, by moving the company to an area where they can pay 1/2 as much for labor. And you get what you pay for. As a Millwright You know what I mean, not just anybody can do your job.

 

   Another sad thing in manufacturing is things like ISO 9000,9001,9002. Everyone is needing the stuff done by ISO companies thinking that there parts are better than a Non-ISO company. ISO is all about the paper work and making sure it is in order and not about the actual part. Theory is if the paperwork is right than so is the part. As some companies have found out that is not the case. Some stuff gets shipped without the actual parts being inspected because the paper work says they are made right.

 

   Sorry about the long winded posts here but was just trying to help explain why it will take awhile to figure out WHAT HAPPENED and WHY IT HAPPENED. I have had 47 years of working in Manufacturing from sweeping floors to owning the companies.