Waterproofing 'non-conformance' flagged during inspections of LRT tunnel in 2018
Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: April 2, 2019
Taxpayers might have to live with a leaky LRT tunnel, along with the threat of water accumulating in stations and damaging infrastructure, and there’s not much the City of Ottawa can do about it.
An inspection report filed last year suggests there are areas of the Confederation Line tunnel where the “waterstop” material wasn’t installed properly.
“Varieties of issues were identified with waterstop installation that may compromise their effectiveness,” a Rideau Transit Group (RTG) inspector wrote in a report that was started on April 18, 2018. “These issues range from discontinuities to premature saturation of the hydrophilic materials.”
Those waterproofing deficiencies, the report says, weren’t fixed before the concrete was poured. The location is listed in the report as “stations and tunnel.”
The report is included in a new release of “non-conformance” records from 2018 on the $2.1-billion Stage 1 LRT project.
City council’s finance and economic development committee is scheduled to receive an update on the construction of Stage 1 LRT on Tuesday.
RTG, the builder of the 12.5-kilometre rail line, has missed three handover deadlines. The latest one was Sunday and the previous ones were May 24, 2018 and Nov. 2, 2018. RTG now believes it can deliver LRT by the end of June.
There are hundreds of non-conformance reports on file at the city related to the Stage 1 LRT project.
The Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner last year ruled there’s a public interest in lifting the secrecy surrounding the reports, responding to a freedom-of-information appeal by researcher Ken Rubin, who was initially denied access to the records.
Non-conformance reports document deficiencies and are a regular part of tracking construction quality.
RTG and the city both have their own quality-assurance inspectors who regularly check the LRT project.
The reports reveal the quality of construction on the city’s largest infrastructure project, and although there hasn’t been a line drawn directly between the various non-conformance incidents and the delay of LRT, the documents spell out the construction blunders that need to be fixed before the transit system can be turned over to the city.
In many cases, there are no fixes, like in the case of the shabby waterproofing in the tunnel.
The engineer tasked with reviewing report on the waterstop installation wrote that there was nothing that the builder, an RTG sub-company called Ottawa Light Rail Transit Constructors (OLRTC), could do but live with the deficiency.
“Waterstops are an important factor in preventing water ingress into the station and OLRTC should be prepared to fix leaks as a result of deficiently installed waterstops should any occur,” the engineer wrote in May 2018, telling the builder to pay particular attention to where architectural finishes will be applied, since they might need to be taken down to fix leaks in the future.
So why did the lapse happen in the first place?
The report offers a couple of suggestions, including “insufficient training due to personnel turnover.”
RTG wasn’t too worried about it, calling it an “acceptable” risk in the report since there are prevention measures for groundwater infiltration and waterproofing around the tunnel between stations. There was no water leaking through in the areas where the waterproofing wasn’t installed properly, RTG observed at the time.
A separate June 2018 report filed by an RTG inspector found water infiltration in various locations on the concrete final lining in the tunnel. RTG expected that physical or chemical barriers would need to be installed or injected to solve the infiltration problem.
During a finance and economic development committee meeting in February 2019, RTG chief executive Peter Lauch told councillors there’s no worry about water seeping into the tunnel in the future. The city’s transportation general manager, John Manconi, said “every tunnel has water in it” and there are collections systems for it.
Michael Morgan, the city’s director of rail construction, said on Monday that all major non-conformance reports will be resolved before the Stage 1 LRT project is substantially completed.
Morgan said that if any construction quality issues arise, RTG will be responsible for repairs during the 30-year maintenance contract.
“It is this aspect of the city’s P3 (public-private partnership) agreement with RTG that provides the confidence that there should not be any long-term impacts resulting from these (non-conformance reports),” Morgan said in an email sent through the city’s communications department.
There were multiple reports in 2018 about damaged or failing snow-melt cables in outdoor stations.
There was a problem with the snow-melt infrastructure at Hurdman because of a “lack of due care and attention” during the installation of precast stairs, one report says. Other reports flagged damage to snow-melt cables at Blair and Cyrville stations.
Faulty snow-melt infrastructure is a good example of how the city would penalize RTG if the transit system isn’t maintained properly, Morgan said.
“If RTG does not maintain the platform heating cables in good working order and is not able to keep the platforms clear of snow through other means, then the city will be able to make deductions against their monthly payment,” Morgan said. “RTG is fully incentivized to ensure that all of the systems are working and that the Confederation Line works reliably for our customers.”
City inspectors in 2018 found deficiencies in retail spaces, including insufficient communication and power connections. One report says an inspector discovered that a power connection for the Hurdman Station retail space was installed eight metres above the area, “which is not reasonably accessible.”
Another report by city inspectors in July 2018 accuses RTG of not using the contracted amount of glass on elevators, which could make areas of the stations unsafe. According to the report, RTG’s own consultant in charge of crime prevention by environmental design remarked that using metal panels instead of glass in some areas reduced the “witness potential.” The report suggests RTG questioned the city’s calculation of how much of the elevator infrastructure was glass.
Some of the reports must drive RTG crazy since repairs were probably avoidable in the first place.
Take, for example, a report from June 2018 that documented a saw cut discovered in the top of a rail around Hurdman Station.
How did that happen?
“Workers used the rail to support material while cutting,” the report says.
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