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Multnomah County forensic engineers continued to perform detailed inspections of the Morrison Bridge on Tuesday, investigating how and why the deck is wearing out prematurely as well as making needed repairs.

Engineers are pulling up panels from the bridge deck’s steel grating, and documenting what they find with photos and video. Some of the panels – made of fiber-reinforced polymer – are being replaced to maintain safety, county spokesman Mike Pullen said.

“This is not the big repair that’s needed,” he said. “Unfortunately, we are going to have to do a much bigger repair after we figure out what’s gone wrong.”

Meanwhile, the $4.2 million steel grating replacement project, which took place in 2011, is continuing to elicit legal action.

The county last year attached itself to a lawsuit filed by the project’s general contractor, Ridgefield, Wash.-based Conway Construction, claiming that blame belonged to the deck panels’ manufacturer and supplier. The panels were made by Durham, N.C.-based ZellComp Inc., and supplied by Bristol, Va.-based Strongwell Corp.

Multnomah County also filed suit March 14 against New York City-based Hardesty and Hanover LLP, ZellComp’s engineering firm that design the fiber-reinforced polymer system. The suit alleges that Hardesty and Hanover failed to adequately integrate the decking with other bridge elements.

Conway’s attorney, Portland-based Joseph Yazbeck, said the county met with Hardesty and Hanover and ZellComp long before the contractor became involved in the project.

Yazbeck said the county’s suit against Hardesty and Hanover should absolve Conway from blame. He asserted that the county’s use of a different kind of screw to repair some of the panels shows that the design dictated by the design team was faulty.

“Conway essentially had no control over what ZellComp produced for the design,” Yazbeck said. “ZellComp was totally in control.”

The lawsuits are scheduled to go to trial in February 2015.