Part of Bruce Paterson’s comments on another UCIA fiasco included the suggestion:
Below is the full clip. Though the reference at the beginning about the county being ‘litigious against anyone expressing free speech’ may seem out of place, I assure you it is not and I have a blog ready to go once another outlet reports on the latest bully move a couple of county employees (who really run this place) pulled this holiday season.
Since the county is becoming litigious against anyone expressing free speech, and who may be critical them, I preface my comments moving forward as my opinion, and with alleged and apparent adjectives. This puts a chill on anyone who would stand at this microphone to comment negatively regarding county operations and its shadow entities that have become a total farce of self-enrichment, tax abuse and possible corruption. Democracy has died in this room.
General comments: I have reviewed the latest UCIA approved proposals from Mast construction and DIG architecture. Again we find there are major issues with these proposals, so open ended with no controls, leaving much to interpretation, which later probably the UC govt will have to cover with tax monies no matter whose fault it is..I don’t expect most of you here to understand what I am commenting about.
First -we find its still in the design-build format with GC (general contractor) proposals which will be evaluated for cost performance. This originally failed the first time by the lawsuit that ensued last year. By now it should be a full competitive lump sum bid project based on drwgs being at least 90-95% complete which is normal req for lump sum bids. Design build gives too much leeway for bias selection thru builder evaluation process. Example-they can easily select Terminal construction again; him putting in a low bid and then making the loss up in change orders with no real oversight being generated based on incomplete DIG drwgs. This fully tells me that DIG cannot handle the design of such a large project, that according to Bibi Taylor now executive director of the UCIA who approved them, turns out to just be friends with her for 20 years per her own statement.
The DIG proposal: Nowhere does it indicate what completion level % of the drwgs that they are designing to. This is a mandatory req, but there are no experienced people at the UCIA to catch these failings. This design level % should be at least 90% to avoid lots of missing items that get to be change orders downstream with 15-20% mark ups for the contractors, plus added burden costs by Mast and DIG handling. In DIGs new proposal he noted “redesign” of mechanical, electrical and structural design. Obviously, he must have screwed up the first time. No one in authority catches this scope failure. Yet he is now billing twice for the same work. From his proposal he should be deducting the original costs of the initial mech, elect and struct design since he apparently screwed up the first time and is now redoing it.
The Mast Proposal–the work they are providing for $1.4 million is reasonable since they are only proposing minimal work at best regretfully. This could have easily went out to a competitive bid. Mast says he will be involved in the selection of a Design-Builder, which is actually a conflict since Mast is a GC evaluating other GC bidders. There also should be a “schedule of values” mentioned which is given by the GC to bill against, nor control of prevailing wages nor assurances of cost controls involved with proper paper flows and sign offs from authorities. From Ph 1, Terminal’s SOV was never scrutinized so Terminal had front loaded the SOV and just for some demolition and ground remediation, he was able to bill $9 million which in my opinion probably cost only $4-5 million. So we are facing the same issue with no real cost controls in place.
The govt is fully supposed to be the one looking out for the public’s interest, 1st and 2nd tier contractors do not have obligations direct to the taxpayers. Again, we are looking at an imminent failure of a project. This falls at the feet of gross mismanagement, incompetence, and inexperience. In other words, your Bibi Taylor must be removed from her lucrative executive position she has wiggled her way into. The profound failure I see is that she has a full time job at the county as finance director yet she now also oversees the shadow entity of the Union County Improvement Authority which originally had a full time position up until 1 year ago. And there are no employees left in that authority for cost analysis. The public laughs at those that continue to support this failure.
countywatchers 