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http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/bay-bridge/article4748610.html

From the article:

This is a tale of two projects.

One – the $6.5 billion San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge – is the largest public works project in state history. (More specifically, its $2 billion suspension-span segment.) The other – the $1.8 billion Greater Gabbard Offshore Wind Farm in the North Sea off Suffolk, England – is one of the world’s biggest wind-energy projects.

Both were built between 2008 and 2011 in the same Shanghai, China, factory complex. Each suffered from mistakes by inadequately trained Chinese welders. Thousands of welds in the towers for the 140 giant wind turbines cracked. Hundreds of welds in the Bay Bridge roadway cracked, too. Both were contracted and managed by Fluor Corp., an Irving, Texas-based construction firm – by itself for the wind farm, and in a joint venture with Corapolis, Pa.-based American Bridge Co. for the Bay Bridge.

Each required costly repairs. Who paid for the repairs and problems differed markedly.

After a dispute about who would pay for the problems, the wind farm partners won an arbitration judgment worth more than $400 million.

California officials did not get refunds. Feeling pressure to complete the long-delayed bridge, meant to endure a major quake, they paid more. They paid contractors $535 million extra, more than half of that to overcome delays and other problems related to welding. Then they lowered standards and approved a bridge riddled with cracks...

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...To save time and money, the California Department of Transportation and the Toll Bridge Program Oversight Committee looked to China. They even sacrificed federal support, which required American manufacturing.

ZPMC promised efficient, penthouse quality at bargain-basement prices. The wind farm owners and California officials found that irresistible despite ZPMC’s inexperience building wind farms or bridges.

The Chinese firm, a subsidiary of a state-controlled enterprise, produced the wind farm monopiles and transition structures to be placed 14 miles off the coast of England. These are steel tubes secured undersea at a depth of up to 112 feet. Above the water, the towers are topped by turbine rotors.

In 2009, Greater Gabbard’s owners shipped some tower structures from Shanghai to the Netherlands where their quality was checked. On his first day on the job, welding expert Sander Somers tested 20 locations and found 14 transverse cracks – crossing the width of welds and posing a threat to structural integrity.

Soon after, “the circus started,” Somers said in a recent interview with The Sacramento Bee. Dozens of experts descended on the project. The problems were so extensive that virtually every qualified firm in the nation was hired to find flaws using magnetic and ultrasonic testing techniques, he said.

The Netherlands inspectors found more than 7,000 cracks and nearly 900 other defects, according to legal documents obtained by The Bee.

These included many hydrogen-related cracks, often caused when moisture is not removed by correctly pre-heating the base metal. Such welds should be “easy-peasy, if you take your time and follow the procedures,” Somers said.

An analysis by Cambridge, England-based TWI, one of the world’s leading welding research authorities, blamed the problems on ZPMC’s “poor workmanship,” according to the legal filings in London’s High Court of Justice.

Fluor supervised ZPMC, its subcontractor. In a letter to ZPMC, Fluor called the quality problems “catastrophic.”

“Winter was coming on, and they had to move these monopiles to the North Sea,” Somers said.

To push the job faster, the wind farm’s owners, along with managers from Fluor, ZPMC and the testing contractors, decided to reduce the stringency of the tests and requirements, he said. The worst defects were repaired, but many others remained, similar to what was being done with the Bay Bridge construction.

Dutch welding expert Leon Birsak said he was brought to Shanghai in 2009 to audit ongoing production. When he arrived at ZPMC’s complex, Birsak said, he found imprecise cuts on many steel plates that formed the parts. Efforts to close resulting gaps in alignment with welds caused cracks and other imperfections.

Many defects were missed. Others were ignored, he said. Inspectors for the army of workers building the towers seemed overwhelmed...

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/bay-bridge/article4748610.html#storylink=cpy