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On Tuesday, Harris County commissioners voted to demolish the partially built Beltway 8 bridge over the Houston Ship Channel after discovering major flaws in the original designs of the bridge.

The demolition and rebuilding of the bridge will cost the county $291 million and will push the completion date of the first span of the bridge to 2025, and the second span in 2027.

FIGG Bridge Group, the engineering firm and contractor hired to design the new bridge attempted a new technique which involved fabricating sections of new roadway on the ground and hoisting the segments into place.

Construction on the bridge began in 2018, which is the same year another FIGG-constructed bridge in Florida collapsed, killing six people.

In 2019, COWI, another engineering firm, was hired by Harris County to inspect FIGG’s original designs for the bridge and determine if they were safe. It was determined that there were 21 “significant” flaws in the designs, which halted construction.

“The previous design was flawed,” Harris County Toll Road Authority executive director Roberto Trevino told Begley. “It would have led to failure of the bridge.”

COWI has been hired in place of FIGG Bridge Group to redesign the bridge. Ship Channel Constructors, another company, will demolish some of the existing bridge and will rebuild the entire Beltway 8 bridge.