Coliseum Repair Was Called for but Not Done

Three steel columns that are crucial to the support of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum press box were rejected by construction inspectors last year because of defects, but in an extraordinary turnabout, the columns were later accepted without a recommended repair being made, previously undisclosed records and interviews show.

Two inspectors at first rejected the columns after detecting separations, called “laminations,” within the two-inch-thick plates that box in the 20-foot-tall pillars.

One of the three rejected columns was brought to the attention of structural engineers by project officials or contractors, who proposed a repair to satisfy the inspectors’ objections. The engineers found the proposal inadequate, and called instead for replacement of a major part of the column.

But neither the replacement nor the more modest repair proposed by the contractors was made, the inspectors said. Relying on an examination that recent engineering guidelines warn can be undependable, one of the inspectors said he agreed, reluctantly, to accept all three columns.

The two inspectors said they were unaware of the engineers’ directive to make the major repair until shown documentation recently by The Times. If they had known during construction of the directive, the inspectors said, they would have stood by their original rejections of the three columns. The columns have helped support the press box since the opening of the 1995 college football season.

“I did not know that’s what the engineer wanted,” said one of the inspectors, Dennis Johnson, when shown copies of internal memos from the structural engineer, written in June 1995. “I didn’t hear anything from the engineer. . . . If the engineer had said that, we wouldn’t have bought [accepted]” any of the three columns.

The other inspector, Cecil Farrar, said: “It’s the first I’ve heard of it. The bottom line is, the engineer called for the repair. He didn’t get it.”

Johnson has continued to work this year for Smith-Emery Co., the firm that supervised the Coliseum work. Farrar, described by Smith-Emery’s president as an “A-plus” inspector, retired last summer.

Construction of the press box was paid for entirely with emergency federal and state funds. The structure overhangs about 600 spectator seats and relies on a succession of welded connections and seven vertical “box” columns. Experts say the points of abnormality identified in three of those vertical columns are significant because they encompass areas where horizontal beams are welded in.

One of the outside experts contacted by The Times, professor John W. Fisher of Lehigh University, said an area of separation or lamination can grow once a horizontal beam is welded to the vertical column. “Then you risk weakening the section,” said Fisher, who is a national authority on structural steel construction.

The inspectors first detected the separations by using ultrasound, a method considered by experts to be reliable in identifying such defects. The ultrasound testing had found the pockets of separation roughly one inch deep in the steel and up to nine inches long.

After a May 5 Times article reporting a series of welding-related problems during construction of the press box, the engineering firm of Nabih Youssef & Associates provided the city with a limited certification of the facility’s structural adequacy. Youssef did not certify that the structure was built in conformance with his design. This in part has prevented the city from issuing a permanent occupancy permit.

Youssef, asked in an interview three weeks ago whether he would now insist upon the box-column repair ordered in June 1995 by one of his engineers, said he was not familiar enough with the matter to comment. During that conversation and in two subsequent telephone calls, Youssef said that he would provide an answer, but so far has not done so. One of his engineers responsible for the work declined to comment Thursday.

The next scheduled event at the Coliseum is a Latin music concert Saturday night.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said the handling of the three columns provides further reason to rigorously scrutinize the construction. The Coliseum Commission is now conducting a review of the structural soundness of the press box.

“If this project is safe, and it may be, the Coliseum is going to have a hard time convincing the public because of the way this has been handled,” said Yaroslavsky, who is also a member of the Coliseum Commission. “It’s been handled as though somebody has something to hide.”

Yaroslavsky has criticized the commission’s engaging of Don C. Webb, the same consultant who managed the original construction, to oversee the structural review of the press box. Webb has defended the quality of the original work and his management of it.

The building of the press box, along with the restoration of the entire Coliseum after the Northridge earthquake, was conducted on a rushed basis, according to the project architect and others.

Interviews and the newly obtained construction documents show that the inspectors’ rejection of the three box columns--and the engineer’s recommended repair of the one pillar brought to his attention--drew the concern of Webb. He noted the engineer’s assessment of the box column in a June 22, 1995, memo to the project’s general contractor, Tutor-Saliba Corp.

“The bad news on the delaminated box column plate,” Webb wrote, “is that Nabih Youssef & Associates, after conferring with their welding engineer, considers the repair method proposed by [a steel subcontractor] to be unacceptable.” The repair Webb referenced would have replaced several feet of the defective steel plate; records show this was proposed by Herrick Corp., owner of San Bernardino Steel, where the columns were fabricated.

Webb wrote that he would convene a meeting at Tutor-Saliba’s offices the next morning and was inviting one of Youssef’s engineers.

Webb concluded: “Absent any clever ideas generated at the meeting, it appears that the only solution will be to remove the entire compromised plate and replace it with acceptably laminated material.”

Four days later, replacement of the entire, 20-foot-long plate is what the Youssef engineering firm called for, in a memo distributed to top project officials.

“We recommend that the plate with laminations be removed and replaced,” said the June 26, 1995, memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Times. “. . . Due to the number of laminations [16], the integrity/quality of the remaining plate is questionable.”

After getting no response from project officials to his recommendation to replace the box-column plate, one of Youssef’s engineers, Brent Nuttall, reiterated his concern in a June 29, 1995, memo to the project architect, Lanson Nichols.

“Replacement of the plate was recommended,” Nuttall wrote. “We have not received any information documenting the repairs and/or retesting of the column. In order to avoid any unnecessary delays in the project, we recommend that this information be submitted for review as soon as possible and prior to erection of the column.”

The next day, Webb wrote to both the engineer and to Nichols. He quoted a Smith-Emery inspection document reporting that all three originally rejected box columns had been accepted.

Last November, two months after the opening of the new press box, Youssef’s engineering firm still listed the unrepaired box column as an “outstanding” structural issue in a memo to the architect.

Johnson, the inspector who first rejected but ultimately agreed to accept the three Coliseum box columns, said he finds it “very strange” that he did not receive the engineer’s directive.

He accepted the box columns, Johnson said, in consultation with Robert A. Hay, chief of inspection at Smith-Emery Co. Hay declined to comment.

The ultimate acceptance of all three columns, Johnson said, came after Herrick Corp. directed one of its welders to gouge into “three or four” areas in one of the box-column plates that had been identified as defective by the ultrasound testing.

According to Johnson, the welder’s gouging found pockets of sand-like material in the steel, about 1/8 of an inch in diameter. Johnson said he then performed a procedure on one of the gouged areas, using a magnetic-sensitive powder, and could not find a more extensive abnormality. Johnson said the size of the pockets shown by the gouging was smaller than what the applicable code defines as a rejectable lamination.

“It’s a very questionable, judgment call,” Johnson said.

In consultation with Hay, Johnson said, he then agreed to accept the other two rejected box columns--despite the ultrasound findings of multiple separations in the steel. He did so, Johnson said, on the assumption that the pockets of “dirty” steel found by the gouging of the one box column were similar to what might exist in the other two columns. He said no gouging or further examination was performed at the shop on those two originally rejected columns.

Johnson noted his concern regarding all three columns in reports he filed during the construction. In a handwritten June 27, 1995, report that was kept in Smith-Emery’s private files, Johnson wrote that the columns would be accepted “pending engineering approval.”

The columns were shipped and installed at the Coliseum, with no record on public file of the engineer’s approval. San Bernardino Steel is a subsidiary of Herrick Corp., whose vice president has told The Times that all work regarding the box columns was performed properly, in compliance with code and contract requirements.

Johnson also wrote in another report, on June 24, that he informed a Herrick supervisor that if the column areas in question “open up” during further welding at the Coliseum, “they are responsible, for insisting on shipping, not Smith-Emery.”

Outside experts interviewed by The Times said they were puzzled by Smith-Emery’s basis for accepting the three box columns. Indeed, guidelines issued in August by the Structural Engineers Assn. of California and the Federal Emergency Management Agency highlight the peril of relying on gouging to disregard a defect identified by ultrasound. “A technician can be falsely lured into reducing his/her rejection criteria if no defect is found during gouging,” the guidelines warn.

Robert Milliron, a Sacramento-based welding engineer with extensive experience, said that he would insist on examining a core sample of the steel plate before dismissing ultrasound data on the basis of a welder’s gouging. Milliron also said that the magnetic powder procedure is often not reliable for finding laminations.

Both Johnson and his inspector colleague, Farrar, said that normally the box columns would have been rejected, based on the ultrasound testing. If the decision had been his alone, Farrar said: “I’d have replaced them.” Johnson said: “The job was a fiasco.”