The Toronto-based contractor in charge of repairing the Third Street Bridge is facing thousands of dollars in penalties after a number of project delays and cancelled reopening dates.
The first penalty against Toronto Zenith is $35,000.
Chatham-Kent's Director of Engineering Chris Thibert told CK News Today that is for not meeting the first temporary bridge opening date back in November 2021.
"There was a condition outlined in the contract to have the bridge open with at least one lane of traffic in each direction by this timeline and failure to achieve that would be a one-time penalty of $35,000 and the overall project completion timeline would still apply," said Thibert. "The contractor did not meet this timeline and this penalty has already been applied."
Municipal officials said last November that several challenges including labour and material shortages and flooding in the area at the end of September 2021 were to blame for the first deadline that was missed.
The contract for the project also spells out something called "liquidated damages", which is an estimated amount of the probable loss that would occur from the late completion of a contract.
"It is an estimated amount of $1,500 per day which took effect on July 22, which was the contractual completion date," said Thibert. "That per-day fine, including weekends, continued to add up until the bridge was substantially completed."
The most recent delay in the project was blamed on a "supplier-related issue" after some pedestrian safety railings didn't arrive in time.
The bridge is now scheduled to reopen to traffic and pedestrians on Wednesday, August 31 at 5 p.m., at which point, those liquidated damages will stop.
Thibert said it’s difficult to say how much the contractor is currently facing because there is a bit of work on the municipality's end to figure out what those damages were.
"Examples of those damages would be staff time and consultant time," said Thibert. "Another example would be if we were to suffer any material or labour cost that we weren't expecting to pay beyond July 22. There's a lot of calculation and investigation involved in figuring out what the true liquidated damages were but we're pretty confident it will be around the $1,500 mark."
A new event to celebrate the new bridge and bridge sponsor, TekSavvy, is in the works after the missed deadline spoiled Bridgerama Days 2022 in Downtown Chatham this past June.
Details on the new event will be shared in the coming months.
