NY sues Cuomo Bridge builders over allegedly faulty cables

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Dive Brief:

• The New York State Thruway Authority is suing the builders of the Mario Cuomo Bridge to get them to pay for retrofitting dozens of stay cables that it says didn’t meet durability requirements, according to the lawsuit filed Aug. 22 in the New York State Supreme Court in Albany. 
• The $4 billion, two-span cable-stayed span, which replaced the Tappan Zee Bridge, opened six years ago after delays and legal wrangling. Now 61 of the new bridge’s 192 stay cables need to be retrofitted, according to the Authority. 
• The lawsuit claims that Tappan Zee Constructors breached its contract by refusing to redo the work after the project director deemed it unsuitable, among other issues. NYSTA, which operates the bridge, is seeking at least $6 million to recover the costs of evaluation and remediation.

Dive Insight:

There is no immediate danger to users, but in order for the bridge to reach its specified 100-year lifespan, the cables need to be of a certain strength, NYSTA claims. The agency said in an Aug. 22 news release that it has begun the process of retrofitting these stay cable anchorage components.

“The New York State Thruway Authority is committed to ensuring contractor compliance to guarantee the toll payers get what they paid for in the construction of the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, which independent experts have confirmed is safe,” Jennifer Givner, spokesperson for the NYSTA, said in a release.

Per the release, the NYSTA commissioned a full independent safety review of the bridge, which determined that the retrofit of the components is necessary to ensure their durability and full service life.

The team of design builders, Tappan Zee Constructors, is made up of Irving, Texas-based Fluor Enterprises; the American Bridge Co. headquartered in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania; Granite Construction Northeast of Watsonville, California; and Traylor Bros., which is based in Evansville, Indiana.

Tappan Zee Constructors’ scope of work under the contract included designing, fabricating, constructing and installing the new bridge, as well as demolishing the old structure, according to the lawsuit. Lead contractor Fluor did not respond to Construction Dive’s request for comment and the contact information listed on the Tappan Zee Constructors website is no longer working.

Tappan Zee not new to controversy

This is not the project’s first lawsuit: Tappan Zee Constructors sued NYSTA twice in an effort to recoup almost $1 billion in cost overruns. 

In 2021, the contractors filed suit against the agency, seeking $961 million for extra expenses associated with bad weather, a crane collapse and interference from another design-build team.

That claim followed a 2019 lawsuit, in which Tappan Zee Constructors asked a judge to compel the agency to provide documents about the Cuomo Bridge project that could prove its claim that it was owed $900 million in extra costs incurred during construction.

The controversies don’t stop there. The New York State Attorney General investigated a possible coverup of defective steel bolts used in the bridge’s construction, but testing revealed that the cause was likely a manufacturing defect or over-tightening during installation. 

There were also concerns about the opening of the second span. The New York Times reported that former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration allegedly offered incentives to the builders to open the eastern bridge to traffic in August 2018, even though there were possible safety implications, an accusation that Cuomo denied. Some engineers were reportedly concerned that a piece of the old bridge could fall onto the new one.