The Tacoma News Tribune had a story that slipped by last week (hat tip to the SunBreak for catching it) about a concrete supplier firing staff and halting production of an essential tunnel part:
The company, FPS EnCon, told some 85 workers last Friday that it was issuing layoffs for an indefinite period and stopping production of the semi-circular concrete liners for the state Route 99 vehicular tunnel.
Those concrete liners are an integral part of the $3.14 billion Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Project… The $80-million tunnel-boring machine is scheduled to begin boring the 2-mile tunnel this month.
A parent company from Spain, Dragados, issued a prepared statement saying it expects to be back in production this week—which seems odd, considering the subsidiary laid off staff indefinitely and stopped production—but the company’s underlying business arrangements sound tangled. One half of FPS EnCon reportedly wants to “extricate itself from the joint venture with FPS and work for the European company as a subcontractor.” Who knows if this will delay the deep-bore tunnel, which has thread-bare margin for cost overruns, but it sounds like it could get messy.