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news
Contractor
faulted again
By Jo Appleton
On-line Forty-Niner
Cal State Long
Beach took over the Fine Arts Buildings renovation project
last week after kicking the construction company off the site
for a second time because it was not happy with the rate at
which things were progressing, staff said.
Scott Charmack, associate vice president of Physical Planning
and Facilities Management, said there have been warnings from
day one on this project. Dennis J. Amorosa Construction Inc.
was kicked off the project last February, also due to a lack
of performance.
The construction company then fought the default with its
attorneys and an agreement was worked out to bring the company
back to only do Phase I of a four-phase project.
The company was given until April 12 to complete a list of
items still left to be completed in Phase I, which includes
the Fine Arts Buildings 1 and 2, but was unable to complete
the items by that deadline. As part of the return agreement
after the first dispute, CSULB will now finish that work at
the company's expense, said Charmack.
"We feel that they weren't progressing the way they should
have been," Charmack said. "We certainly didn't
like the costs, so we terminated the agreement."
New landscape contractors were on the site working on the
turf April 16, which is a No. 1 concern because the west side
of campus where the Fine Arts Buildings are located is also
where the commencement ceremonies will be held in about two
weeks, Charmack said.
"We're going to have nine commencement ceremonies,"
said Charmack. "So we'll have 6 or 7,000 people coming.
We can't let parents or our graduates see the campus that
way."
Charmack said there
are statutory limits to the size of projects the university
is able to take on and the Fine Arts Buildings renovation
is outside of those limits.
"We can do
parts of the project," he said. "But facilities
is so tied up with work right now that about 90 percent of
the work will be contracted out."
Sue Brown, facilities management director and head of the
project, has decided to use Dalke Construction on most of
the remaining work. Dalke is considered a job-order contractor,
meaning the contractor does work on a unit-cost basis, rather
than one contract for all the work.
Brown said the
university is putting together five bid packets this week
to address the work that remains to be done such as landscaping,
telecommunications, mechanical, interior painting and sod
work, -pre-grown grass that is later planted. She said they're
pushing contracts as quickly as possible with the hope of
reaching the target completion date of Fine Arts Buildings
1 and 2 by mid-May and Fine Arts 3 and 4 by mid-August.
The bidding process
for state work or what is referred to as "public works"
is one left to be desired, Charmack said. The majority of
the work goes to the lowest bidder and sometimes the company
is very good and sometimes the company is not, he said.
"I think there
is a perception that open-low bid is the best way to get the
least costly work. The truth of the matter is nothing could
be farther from the truth," Charmack said. "It is
the cheapest price if you only look at it to the day of the
bid but you have to look at the costs when you're finished
verses when you bid it, and if you compare the two you're
going to find it's not the cheapest."
Charmack said some
contractors come in with low costs at the time of bid but
make money along the way by dragging their feet and causing
a lot of difficulties by trying to substitute for cheap, inferior
product or trying to make claims on projects.
Which may be the
situation with the new science building project that started
more than a year ago and has an expected completion date of
January 2003. Charmack said the contractor is telling them
it is going to be on schedule but that the university doesn't
buy that.
"Let's just
say that the contractor and the university probably don't
agree on the projected completion date and the implications
thereof," said Charmack.
A consulting group, whose expertise is in scheduling, will
probably be brought in to see if the contractor is on schedule
and to get them back on schedule if it is not, said Charmack.
He added that he is concerned with the increased costs to
the university if the project is not finished on time.
"There are
cost factors," he said. "The longer we have to manage
the project, have staff there, inspectors there, construction
managers there, the more costly it is to the campus."
It would be nice if we could use other means of procuring
construction services here in the state of California, Charmack
said of the state's public works' open-low bid process.
"If the [open-low
bid] system is so good, my question would be why wouldn't
every private entity in the state use it?" Charmack said.
"It's not the best for public interest," he added.
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