The company that designed the bridge that fell onto Southwest Eighth Street built spans all over the country and earned considerable acclaim. Some are considered gems.<\/b>
\nThe founder of the FIGG Bridge Group engineering firm was so widely admired that the nation\u2019s oldest civil engineering association named a scholarship after him.
FIGG is a bit of a rarity among engineering firms: It designs only bridges \u2014 spans over briny bays, over green mountain hollers, over congested urban roadways and over the Colorado River en route to Utah\u2019s red rock marvels.
The company, based in Tallahassee, designed a bridge that spans Tampa Bay, the iconic Sunshine Skyway, which replaced an earlier structure that had been the subject of one of the most stunning, and tragic, collapses in U. S. history. It designed the Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys. It developed the Linn Cove Viaduct \u2014 the final piece of the breathtaking Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina \u2014 which was designated a National Civil Engineering Landmark.
NASA chose FIGG to repair bridges at both the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and the firm replaced the Interstate 35 bridge in Minneapolis that toppled to the ground in 2007 \u2014 a $233.8 million project that includes 10 lanes of traffic. On a less grand scale, FIGG designed the pedestrian bridge over Tallahassee\u2019s Cascades Park, which turned a gas plant pollution debacle into an urban gem.
After a 175-foot stretch of the FIU University\/City Prosperity Project bridge collapsed Thursday \u2014 taking at least six lives below it \u2014 FIGG, which designed the bridge, issued a statement through a publicist: \u201cThis pedestrian bridge collapse is truly tragic. The focus right now is on the first responders\u2019 recovery operations. Multiple agencies have already begun an extensive review to determine what caused the collapse, and we will work closely with all appropriate authorities in this effort.\u201d
The statement referred to the collapse as \u201can unprecedented event\u201d \u2014 twice. An earlier statement Thursday said: \u201cIn our 40-year history, nothing like this has ever happened before.\u201d
But the mishap was not an entirely isolated event.
In 2012, a 90-ton piece of concrete plunged to the ground when a portion of the Jordan Bridge, then under construction, collapsed near Norfolk, Virginia. It was about 4 p.m. on June 21,2012, when a portion of the bridge measuring 52 feet long and 10 feet wide toppled. The South Norfolk Jordan Bridge traverses the Southern Branch Elizabeth River, from the cities of Portsmouth to Chesapeake. FIGG was overseeing the project as South Norfolk Jordan Bridge, LLC.
The Virginian-Pilot reported at the time that the builder did not get a manufacturer\u2019s written consent before it modified a girder that ultimately failed, causing the span to crash. Litigation followed, and the Norfolk and Portsmouth Belt Line Railroad Company sued FIGG in 2013, alleging the collapsed bridge \u201ccompletely blocked\u201d the rail line\u2019s tracks, and damaged its switch scanner, track bed and crossing.
The Belt Line\u2019s service was interrupted for a little over a week, an April 2013 lawsuit said, which was about how long it took to explode the fallen bridge and remove it. The rail line alleged damages of more than a half-million; the suit was settled, and then dismissed.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, fined FIGG $28,000 for its role in the Virginia bridge collapse, which included eight separate citations, three of which were considered \u201cserious,\u201d records show. The Virginia Department of Labor also cited the firm for four violations.
FIGG \u2014 which has offices in Alabama, Texas, Colorado, Minnesota and Pennsylvania \u2014 was founded 40 years ago by Eugene Figg Jr., a Citadel graduate and structural engineer who is credited with helping to revolutionize bridge development through the use of segmental construction. Eugene Figg died in 2002, and his daughter, Linda Figg, is the firm\u2019s president and CEO.
FIGG was embroiled in another legal dispute in the late 1990s and early 2000s after a separate construction company, Odebrecht-Metric, was accused of dumping tons of construction debris into Pensacola Bay.
The project \u2014 derisively called \u201cBo\u2019s Bridge\u201d after the powerful Panhandle lawmaker who bullied through its development \u2014 had been a magnet for controversy virtually from the moment former Florida House Speaker Bolley \u201cBo\u201d Johnson proposed it. Critics charged, among other things, that the two-lane bridge connecting U. S. Route 98 with Interstate 10 and Route 90 near Milton would never collect enough tolls to retire the $95 million bond issue that paid for it.
And they were right: The project defaulted in 2002, and has been an albatross on the state ever since. The Legislature considered two proposals this session that would allow the state to take ownership of the bridge from the Santa Rosa Bay Bridge Authority \u2014 and either change toll rates or issue new bonds to pay back bondholders. Lawmakers eventually decided to do nothing, which could prompt bondholders to force them to increase tolls to try and make up the more than $135 million they are owed.
Critics also charged that the bridge construction would spawn an environmental mess \u2014 and they were right about that, too.
The project is formally called the Garcon Point Bridge. Odebrecht-Metric reportedly got a bonus for building the span ahead of schedule.
The accelerated pace of construction may have been aided by an unorthodox method of waste disposal. Between 1997 and 1999, Odebrecht dumped much of its construction debris \u2014 including concrete, concrete pilings, and steel reinforcement bars \u2014 directly into the open water, the U. S. Justice Department said.
\u201cThe company\u2019s permit allowed it to dump non-hazardous construction debris several miles off the coast in the Gulf of Mexico, where it could have been properly used as reef material,\u201d prosecutors said at the time. Instead, \u201cinvestigative dives and sonar have revealed that, as a result of the criminal activity, at least 3.75 acres of construction debris had been left under the bridge span on the bottom of the East Bay and the Pensacola Bay.\u201d
The company and three of its supervisors pleaded guilty to environmental crimes, and Odebrecht agreed to pay a total of $4 million in fines and restitution.
FIGG was not prosecuted. But the company was supposed to be inspecting and overseeing Odebrecht\u2019s work, and faced withering accusations that it looked the other way while Odebrecht workers despoiled the bay \u2014 allegations FIGG vehemently denied.
\u201cIf a contractor is going to make an illegal dumping, they are not going to do it in front of an inspector,\u201d Linda Figg told what is now called the Tampa Bay Times in 2001.
The legal wrangling in the Panhandle then begat a separate dispute in the Treasure Coast. While FIGG was working with the St. Lucie County Expressway and Bridge Authority to design and build a bridge traversing the Indian River Lagoon, multiple news outlets reported that a federal grand jury was investigating violations of the Clean Water Act in the Panhandle, galvanizing opposition to the project.
In 2000, FIGG filed a lawsuit alleging that four people had committed slander, libel and \u201cconspiracy\u201d by questioning if the company should be involved in what was being called the Walton Road Bridge, given what had happened at Garcon Point.
The firm alleged that four particular critics \u2014 Charles Grande, Edward McKay, Roger Sharp and Kevin Stinette \u2014 acted maliciously by raising questions about the company\u2019s past at a series of St. Lucie County Commission meetings. The critics were fighting, the September 2000 lawsuit said, \u201cfor their own personal and self-serving reasons.\u201d
The company \u201cthought these four guys wouldn\u2019t have the money to defend the lawsuit and would immediately agree to shut up and apologize,\u201d said Tallahassee attorney Robert Rivas, who represented the defendants in court. The company dropped its suit after federal and state officials disclosed that it was under criminal investigation surrounding the illegal dumping at the Garcon Point bridge. \u201cThey learned their lesson,\u201d Rivas said.
The Walton Road Bridge was never built.<\/p>\n

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