SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Flaws in the Deh Cho Bridge will cost between $4 million and $7 million to repair, but NWT taxpayers won't have to pay.

The Government of New Brunswick will bear some of the financial brunt for mistakes made by New Brunswick-based ATCON Construction during its time as general contractor of the $182.8 million project.

Kevin McLeod, project manager for the Department of Transportation, said all the recommendations made in an audit completed last November on ATCON's work will be followed up on and completed.

"The GNWT has accepted the report and has the time and resources available to address all the recommendations," he said, adding the report cost $285,000 to complete.

Completed by Levelton Consultants, a British Columbia-based firm, the audit investigated work done by ATCON before it was removed as general contractor in 2009. Made public on Jan. 17, the audit reveals several minor flaws but nothing that will set back the project's completion date of November 2011, said McLeod.

One major issue raised in the report was incomplete and missing information to do with certification of material and quality control on the project's materials and work, among other things, which McLeod said arose when ATCON was taken off the project by the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation in late December 2009. On April 1, 2010, the GNWT took over management of the project from the corporation and then assigned Ruskin Construction Ltd. to be general contractor.

McLeod said when the project changed hands some documentation may have been lost, adding there were "some deficiencies in document control."

All repairs and the cost of the report will all be paid for through a $2.9 million holdback from ATCON and $13.3 million from the New Brunswick government.

"The holdback is money that ATCON has earned and that we held back as we do in every instance until such time as the ATCON involvement has been fully remediated and closed out," said Earl Blacklock, manager of communications for the Department of Transportation.

"We'd access the holdback first and if the holdback is not sufficient then we would access the amount in the ($13.3 million) bank account."

The New Brunswick government acted as guarantor for ATCON on the project. That gave the Miramichi-based company $50 million to jump start the project, which included more than $20 million to build a steel fabrication plant. Months after the bailout, ATCON was removed from the project for being unable to meet the then-expected cost of $162 million and filed for bankruptcy soon after.

After repairs are completed, any remaining funds from the New Brunswick government's $13.3 million will be returned, said Blacklock.

As well, the GNWT will be looking into all materials where quality control, certification or other documentation was questionable to make sure everything is up to standard, said McLeod.

Another major issue was the lack of a consistent quality control system. McLeod said the fabricators and subcontractors had their own quality control systems. However, there were no overall checks and balances on these systems and the quality control on different aspects, including some early steel fabrication, was inconsistent.

When the GNWT took over the project, it established Levelton as the overall quality control team. McLeod said its role is to "check the checkers" - basically to make sure the quality of all the work being done lives up to accepted Canadian standards, as well as to the specifications of the bridge project.

The bridge is 70 per cent complete, according to the project's website.

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