That obviously is not good and is a sign of a badly run programme, but it is also true that structures are built with a certain level of defects all the time. It sounds like in this case they may have made judgements about that which were questionable but accepting work (including structural) which has some flaws is not abnormal, the question is whether the judgement as to the materiality of the flaws was made for sound engineering reasons or not.
>After two senior engineers challenged quality assurance practices, Caltrans reassigned one and let the other’s contract lapse."
Yes, that does sound quite bad. It's by far the most damning thing, I can't determine from here whether they used good engineering judgement, but dismissing whistleblowers is bad news. It's not corruption though.
>"Tony Anziano, chief executive for toll-bridge work, made at least 64 visits to Shanghai, stayed in one of the city’s most luxurious hotels and spent more than $300,000 on travel during construction."
Totally normal. Anyone writing "one of the city's most luxurious hotels" doesn't understand business travel in Asia where there may not be much between the tiers of "luxury" and "doesn't meet basic standards". Most of that money went on air travel, and I wouldn't want to travel back and forth to China 64 times in a short period. That's not a bribe, it's a punishment.
Admittedly, with this much travel they're going to eat into the savings from using a cheap contractor, not to mention the cost of accommodating their China team which was there full time.
This doesn't sound like corruption, it sounds like they foolishly picked a low bidder that couldn't hack it, tempers within the organisation started to flare when they realised how fucked they were and this guy flew back and forth way more times than was planned in a frantic attempt to fix the cluster-fuck before it all blew up in their faces.