Deh Cho Bridge faces steel delivery delays

The Northwest Territories government is running intoongoing delays in building the Deh Cho Bridge, but officials remain optimistic that the $182-million bridge over the Mackenzie River will befinished on time.

Delays in shipping steel to the bridge site at Fort Providence, N.W.T., have already set the project back by four weeks, but efforts to make up for lost time have yet to begin.

Government project manager Kevin McLeod said general contractor Ruskin Construction was supposed to speed up the work by building from both sides of the river at once.

However, he said the steel spans for the south portion of the bridge still have not arrived yet.

Instead, McLeod said construction will start on the north side of the bridge first. Crews will then start working from both sides of the river when more steel arrives, he said.

"They will be full-out working long shifts to put the segments together and then push the north side out all the way close to the halfway point," McLeod told CBC News.

"For the first two months, for sure, they're going to be working on the north side, no matter what. They have to get that going. They have to get their procedures down pat."

McLeod estimates that the north side could be completely finished by the middle of February,launching the steelbeams at a rate of 20 metres a day.

Once completed, the Deh Cho Bridge will link Yellowknife and other North Slave communities to highways in southern Canada year-round, replacing the current Mackenzie River ferry and ice crossing at Fort Providence.

Tight schedule ahead

McLeod said the bridge construction crews will take a break for the Christmas holidays and resume work early next month.

The crews will face a tight schedule this winter they have to complete the span across the river by the spring, since the temporary bridge supports that are in place right now must be removed before the river ice breaks up.

Chief Joachim Bonnetrouge of the Deh Gah Gotie Dene Council in Fort Providence said with the winter setting in, he's concerned it could be difficult to get much work done on the bridge.

"There's a lot of catch-up to do, maybe in April and May and June," Bonnetrouge said. "They have to pick up the pace."

But McLeod said he is confident the bridge will still open in November 2011 as planned, despite the steel delivery delays.

"We're a year away and, you know, a year's a long time," he said. "We keep on the contractor that he's signed the contract to get [it] done by the end of November."

The results of a construction audit on the first phase of the Deh Cho Bridge construction process are expected to be released later this week.

Levelton Consultants Ltd. started the audit earlier this year, after the N.W.T. government had taken over full responsibility for the project from the Deh Cho Bridge Corp.

The audit was completed on Nov. 30, and McLeod said the Transportation Department is currently deciding how to address the audit's short-term and long-term recommendations.

"They had 16 items in which to say, 'Here, we recommend that you do these 16 things.' We've found that we've already done a lot of them already, and some of them are works in progress that can be done," McLeod said.

Federal Auditor General Sheila Fraser is working on her own audit of the bridge project. The results of that audit are due in March.