When The Observer visited the bridge on January 27, there were bumpy sections on the surface and some visible defects, especially on the side of the lane from Jinja.
But Allan Ssempebwa, the Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) media manager, allays any fears of shoddy work and instead says it is a routine exercise by the contractor to test the strength of the surface before putting a permanent layer.
“We are still doing investigation on the structural behaviour to obtain baseline data. The bridge is now going through a defect liability period which elapses next year,” he says.
However, The Observer has reliably learnt that there is more than meets the eye and this may have far-reaching implications for the promised gold standards of the 525m-long cable-stayed bridge.
WHAT WENT WRONG?
At the moment, UNRA admits work is underway to dig up part of the failed asphalt wearing course and replace it with a new asphalt surface. According to Morris Odrua, the UNRA resident project engineer, there was a loophole in procuring the right asphalt.
“The Germany manufacturer only started making it after the contractor placed the order. Most of it has come but before it is fully applied, the contractor had to be sure it is the real one. One month will be enough to gauge its performance,” he said.
However, an engineer at the bridge who preferred anonymity told The Observer that the cracks and bumps on the surface arose because the asphalt wearing course failed to bond with the concrete underneath. He also noted that the bitumen content in the asphalt seems to have been very high.
“The combination of those two errors is the reason for the major deformations because the asphalt is shearing and sliding over the concrete,” he said.
“The softness of the wearing course is a result of too much bitumen that deforms under the weight of traffic, especially heavy trucks. That’s why the lane from Kenya is more damaged than the one from Kampala.”
The bridge was commissioned on October 17, 2018 but within days; defects had emerged even though UNRA initially dismissed them as minor asphalt issues. With time, however, more cracks emerged, forcing UNRA last week to issue a statement saying the [cracks] are deliberate and for a purpose.
“We needed to test and gather baseline studies on different aspects and performance of the bridge for instance on traffic loads, and it’s general functioning; so, a temporary layer was laid for this purpose. Our teams are now preparing to lay the permanent layer of asphalt,” Ssempebwa said.
But according to Dr Samson Rwahweire, a senior lecturer of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Busitema University, UNRA should own up, the structure is OK but the contractor did shoddy work on the asphalt course. “So [UNRA] are telling me that I construct a house; plaster it, and deliberately introduce cracks? They [UNRA] are simply using a trial-and-error approach, which is dangerous,” he says.
TIMELINE OF EVENTS
The Source of the Nile bridge is a result of a concessional $100m loan from the Japanese government to Uganda through the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The Ugandan government settled the extra $25m. Construction of the bridge started in 2014 when Eng Ssebugga Kimeze was at the helm of UNRA and it was scheduled to be completed in December 2017.
Japanese firm Zenitaka Corporation and Hyundai Engineering and Construction Company of South Korea were contracted to do the work while another Japanese firm, Oriental Consultants, did the supervision.
However, in 2015, UNRA initiated sweeping changes that saw most of the top managers forced out or charged with various corruption offences. In 2016, infighting threatened the bridge’s progress after two Korean sub-contractors; Kamkung Plant Industry Company Limited and Prism Construction Company, engaged in lengthy court battles over the supply and mixing of concrete on the site.
In 2017, just months before the scheduled time for completion, Zenitaka – Hyundai joint venture made an additional claim of $49.1m due to unforeseen costs in breaking through rocks at the site. At the endorsement of Oriental Consultants, UNRA granted their wish to further raise the construction cost to $174m – making the Source of the Nile bridge the costliest in the world in terms of per unit cost.
The deadline for the project was also extended up to October 2018. The irony is, Oriental Consultants was the same firm that was paid $5m to do the detailed engineering design work (including geotechnical investigations that confirmed the hardness of the rocks on which the pylons were to be founded) for the bridge yet they were also handed the task of supervising the project.
An official at the ministry of Works and Transport who preferred anonymity says there was a conflict of interest and the consultant exhibited incompetence.
“How could the same firm that UNRA paid to confirm the hardness of the rock in which the foundation was to be placed approve a claim by the contractor of near $50 million magnitude because the contractor says the rock was harder than the consultant advised UNRA?” he said.
For just this act of negligence, he says, UNRA should have immediately put a claim against this consultant’s Professional Indemnity Insurance which is intended to protect consultants for their negligent acts like this one.
However, for reasons best known to everyone involved in the project, UNRA elected to pay the contractors’ claim and deliberately ignore their claim against the consultant. “This points to acts of collusion to drain taxpayer money on the back of a very soft loan given by the Japanese government,” says the source.
HURRIED WORK
According to Dr Rwahweire, construction work goes through three phases. “There is a timeline for practical completion of work, after which the bridge undergoes rigorous tests before commissioning it for public use. Thereafter, it enters the Defects Liability Period (DLP) normally of 12 – 24 months to ensure that any defects to the built product are fixed. This DLP also serves a purpose of providing proof of good workmanship especially if little to no defects have to be corrected. A bridge, therefore, only goes into DLP after passing all the tests,” he says.
“What is taking place is the removal of a permanent layer. It is not a defect but a structural failure that should raise a red flag on the quality of work that was done. What they are doing now is what was supposed to be done before it was declared okay for public use. Commissioning such a project means it is substantially complete and the facility is usable for its intended purpose, which is not the case, from what we are seeing,” he says.
COLLUSION?
A source at the ministry of Works and Transport who preferred anonymity says laying of the asphalt surface was probably hurried to beat the deadline in order to save the contractor from incurring liquidated liability damages.
A copy of the original contract which The Observer has seen has a clause whereby the contractors would be liable for any delays in the work.
“Failure to complete the project in the agreed timeframe will trigger liquidated liability damages of 0.01 per cent of the project cost on the part of the contractor per extra day,” reads the clause.
This means that had the commissioning of the bridge been delayed by just a day, the contractors would have had to pay a penalty of $175,000 (about Shs 630m) per day until they complete the bridge.
“The bridge didn’t go through the normal tests and some officials in UNRA could have colluded with the contractor to bypass this in order to meet the deadline and escape the punitive damages that were to follow,” says the source.
Meanwhile, it has also emerged that controversial Chinese firm CICO was subcontracted to lay the asphalt wearing surface on the bridge. CICO was the firm at the centre of the procurement controversy on the Mukono-Katosi road when it was subcontracted by Eutaw, a fake company whose owners were sentenced to jail.
When The Observer reached out to Ssempebwa, he confirmed CICO did the work but said the company was not blacklisted after the Mukono-Katosi scam.
QUESTIONABLE SUPERVISION TO BLAME
Industry experts heap most of the blame on poor supervision work. A professor at Makerere University’s College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology (CEDAT) who declined to be named, says the quality of construction work is a reflection of the level of supervision.
“Without competent supervision of a bridge of this magnitude and complexity, even the simplest of activities can go wrong,” he says.
Incidentally, there was a change of guard in UNRA regarding supervision work in 2015 when the authority preferred to use local engineers at the expense of expatriates often preferred on World Bank projects.
The expatriates had overseen most of the UNRA projects such as the Entebbe expressway, whose four kilometers of bridges with flyovers/ interchanges remain intact without any defects.
“One is forced to wonder how a Japanese-built and supervised bridge can have catastrophic failures of vital parts while the Chinese-built ones stand very healthy and strong,” says the professor.
WHAT’S THE WAY FORWARD?
According to Dr Rwahweire, the remedy for this is to do a pavement research in this country so as to tailor make the bitumen for Ugandan conditions.
“Let UNRA set aside a fund for a National Roads Pavement Research Laboratory which will have the Dynamic Shear Rheometer (DSR); Bending Beam Rheometer (BBR); Wheel Tracking Test device (WTT); and temporary asphalt testing centres,” he says.
“Imagine this whole country has no DSR and WTT…how can you predict the surface course against the loads without a DSR and WTT? The only tests we do are softening and penetration; there is need for a specialized roads laboratory.”
