I am writing to respond to the article about the Nevada Dept. of Transportation award of the contract to finish the Galena Creek Bridge, part of the Interstate 580 freeway extension between Reno and Carson City, Nevada. Edward Kraemer and Sons Inc. was the contractor on the original contract to build the bridge. In early 2005, Kraemer notified NDOT of what we believed to be significant problems with wind loadings used to design the steel pilot truss. EKS believed the truss, as designed by NDOT, was likely to fail during erection under certain predictable wind conditions due to deficient member design.
In our opinion, NDOT's engineers appeared to have agreed that the truss required strengthening when NDOT issued two change orders to EKS that attempted to strengthen the pilot truss. NDOT later rescinded the change orders after EKS provided pricing, arguing that truss repairs were essentially unnecessary or, at the very least, EKS' problem to solve. Substantial delays to the critical path arose after disagreements over the effectiveness of the truss were not resolved by the engineer of record. EKS captured the cost of these delays in a claim submitted to NDOT in April 2005.