1 killed on Touhy
- Thread starter Thirdgen89GTA
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Got stuck in ridiculous amounts of traffic this morning trying to get from Des Plaines to EGV. Did not have on local radio so I was clueless as to what happened.
I drive that way once in a while on my way home, have seen those beams and thought that would suck for one of those things to fall.
I drive that way once in a while on my way home, have seen those beams and thought that would suck for one of those things to fall.
From reading the article apparently the beam just folded while they were moving it and it hit the lifts the workers were on.
They did fuck up, I work for a bridge erection company and the company that was demoing the existing bridge "Omega" contacted us a week prior to this collapse in regards of concerns of this exact scenario potentially happening and what would be the proper way of going about it. We proposed a few of our 10ft towers to catch the cantilever and bare the weight so it wouldn't collapse. We quoted them 15K to use our towers, They said that was too much money and they would handle it themselves. Well, you see what happened..... Sad....
The fucked up thing is who knows if that info will ever be available for the family, More then likely there will be a multi million dollar settlement to the families of the deceased and injured. Yea in the grand scheme of everything 15K is nothing when you are talking a upper 6 figure lower 7 figure project. But for the demo company alone it was probably a 200K job..
What happens and I see it all the time, These companies come in to this competitive bid market low to get the job from the state without covering every potential worst case cost. Then when shit pops up that cost $$ they try to find the cheapest route to max profit. Its going to cost them a 100 fold now... We have done work with Omega in the past, They are a very huge outfit but do reckless work sometimes...
The fucked up thing is instead of spending the 15K and doing it right "Because it was too much money" they decided to rent a 250T hydro crane at the rate of 10K a night and set it 250ft away, Boom out and only grab 20% of the beam off the end pier. They then decided to dog down the end with chains and anchors. If it wasnt for the chains on the end the crane would have went down with the beam. So realistically they tried to cut corners to save 5K....
With a bigger company (not entirely sure how big Omega is) but there's a slim chance that the company will close up shop. That's what insurance is for. Now depends on the outcome of the OSHA investigation and whether the insurance company will even pay out (although from what I've seen in the past and know 2nd hand, they normally will). But the insurance company will probably drop their coverage with Omega afterwards. Plus if it came to it, Omega can "close" and just put it in somebody else's name and continue moving forward. I've seen it happen.
Another thing is, sometimes these huge contractors will call up previous bidders (previous jobs) and talk numbers with them. They'll mention that so and so has these numbers and if you can beat them. Yes, it's illegal, but it does happen. There's jobs where we've bidded on jobs and some other company will under bid us by A LOT. How they can even make money is beyond me, but they do bid cheap. And when they do, they tend to try cutting corners whether it be material wise, or labor wise (screwing workers over). Even the union can play a part with the laborers involved in some jobs. Sometimes you do a job in an area, the union finds out, and wants you to use a couple of their guys. Problem is, these guys don't know a spoon from a shovel. At least that happens with smaller companies. Sad thing is, IL CATERS to these unions. Plus these unions also go after a lot of small companies and end up "settling" because these small companies can't afford to go back and forth in court and the Unions know that. Unions even go and bother non union companies and it's just ridiculous.
Yup. At a company I used to work at, we were working on a tower for the tollway. We were non union. When it came time to stack the tower, the union told us that there needed to be an equal number of tower workers and union steel workers. We had to send some of our guys home. Problem was that they don't climb towers so we had to be short handed stacking it.
I worked for a non union company doing a non union job. A union rep for the laborers came out and wanted people to sign up or threatened to to shut the job down. Tell me how that's even legal.
Slim, These companies pay a ton of money in insurance for reasons just like this. Currently Omega is saying the accident happened do to a "Chain failure" which is a crock of shit. Hopefully the state and General contractors stop giving them work and drive them out...
Couldnt have said it better.... IL is broken up into "territories" when it comes to unions. So you can have Local 1 Iron workers who do the chicago area and some of the surrounding burbs, Then you have like Local 394 Iron workers who control Aurora and surrounding burbs, Then Joliet ect. Same with labor unions ect. Union rules are if you are a company that uses workers from a different local in another locals territory on a project, you have to have so many of there men working on the same project. So for instance my company uses Local 1 iron workers, If we do a job in say Joliet. We have to grab so many of there men to be in that territory. Its like being a fucking drug dealer on another dealers turf lol. I am a 150 crane operator by trade so we are a large tri state local with like 30K members. God forbid you have a Scab "Non Union" outfit working a union outfits job. They will have the rat out there the next day lol...
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