Suspension lines of the Pierre-Laporte bridge | An 8 million contract given urgently and without a call for tenders

An 8 million contract has just been awarded urgently and without a call for tenders by the Ministère des Transports (MTQ) to consolidate dozens of lines on the Pierre-Laporte bridge. State engineers denounce the time taken by the government to react.

Henri Ouellette-Vezina
The Press

“We will repeat it again: it was planned to be given urgently for several months, this contract. And the high authorities of the ministry never believed to follow up on it. It demonstrates the government’s lack of mobility,” criticizes the secretary and treasurer of the Professional Association of Government Engineers of Quebec (APIGQ), Andy Guyaz.

As of April, his group – which has not been on strike since July, but which has yet to have its new agreement ratified by its members – says it has informed the ministry of the vulnerabilities on the bridge.

According to the essential services negotiated in May in the context of the engineers’ strike, the APIGQ affirms that two contracts had to be awarded urgently for the Pierre-Laporte bridge: one for the consolidation of the lines, the other for the replacement of several lines. “Despite all this, we had to wait three months to grant an emergency contract? It really raises our eyebrows,” says Guyaz.

28 lines to consolidate

The said contract, worth almost 8 million and formalized on July 22, was made public in recent days on the provincial government’s tender platform. By email, the ministry says that the lines targeted by the contract – awarded to the contractor Pomerleau who is already carrying out other work on the bridge – “are the shorter ones, more likely to deteriorate quickly”. “For 2022, 28 lines need to be consolidated,” says spokesperson Nicolas Vigneault.

“As the engineers’ strike delayed the whole process, the ministry was no longer in a position to turn to a traditional call for tenders. This process reduces lead times and facilitates site management,” adds the spokesperson.

For Andy Guyaz, “to claim that a month’s strike breaks part of the bridge’s schedule is strictly inaccurate”. “The reality, he says, is that our engineers are there, but everyone has to be there, and that includes the contractor. You have to be consistent at some point. »

Another contract worth 14.5 million was also awarded at the end of June to the contractor Stellaire to replace some twenty other lines and install temporary supports. A call for tenders was however used. “Replacements will take place this fall. The lines that cannot be replaced before winter will be secured by adding a temporary support until they are replaced in the spring of 2023,” says Nicolas Vigneault of the MTQ.

In June, it is first a report from the show Investigation of Radio-Canada which had revealed that the suspension lines of the Pierre-Laporte bridge were less and less resistant. The public network had revealed in broad daylight the report produced by two engineers from the Ministry of Transport, which was sent to senior managers at the end of April, according to which certain lines could even “give way at any time”.

The Minister of Transport, François Bonnardel, was not even informed of the existence of this report at the time, which he considered “unacceptable”. “My deputy minister will shed light on the process that led to this mess. He has already taken action,” said Mr. Bonnardel. He says that an “external firm will be commissioned to examine the process that led to these errors”.

“Already, the ministry was planning to replace the lines within a 15-year schedule, but we are going to speed up the pace. It will not take 15 years, ”also raised Mr. Bonnardel.