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8.18.04 Delays are cost of penny-wise approach Tons of dirt sat along Fort Street. A lack of recent activity at 132nd and Blondo Streets has allowed weeds to grow in the construction zone. The dirt had to be moved. But it wasn't moved. The dirt sat and sat. And it revealed how loosely the City of Omaha oversees road construction projects. In spring 2003 the dirt was in the middle of the Fort Street widening project, near 114th Street. The road contractor, WBE Co., needed the dirt as fill on the project's west end at 120th Street. It was only six blocks. But there was hitch. In between was a work crew from the Metropolitan Utilities District that was lowering a gas main in the middle of Fort. The contractor and city officials talked about options. The city suggested the contractor load the dirt into a dump truck and go around the utility work. The contractor mentioned hauling dirt to 120th from elsewhere. Neither happened. Nothing happened. The city chose not to force the issue. The city chose not to insist that the contractor move the dirt or bring in other dirt or do other types of work while it waited for the utility to finish. The contractor abandoned the Fort project for more than a month, dispatching crews to other projects. As days of delay became weeks, the city extended the contractor's time for finishing Fort. "We don't micromanage" contractors, said city construction engineer Tim O'Bryan. "For us to act like the superintendent and tell them 'do it this way' -- that's not our role." The dirt on Fort illustrates the City of Omaha's accommodating attitude toward contractors, and it's an extreme example of the toll that can take on motorists. The Fort project is a one-mile stretch of road in its third construction season. While the dirt is gone now, the project remains a daily headache for 16,100 motorists. Folks near Fort see it as a fiasco, and they get no argument from city officials, who see the project as a "perfect storm" of road-building mishaps. But the type of problems seen on Fort are typical of what The World-Herald found in its study of construction zones across Omaha: City-run projects had fewer workers and more delays than projects run by the State Roads Department. City officials say their approach to managing road construction is in sync with their top priority -- protecting Omaha taxpayers' money. They plan and administer projects to help contractors thrive. That helps ensure there are plenty of bidders on the next round of projects. The trade-off between saving money and saving time is rarely considered. Elsewhere, different methods of handling projects highlight that trade-off and accelerate construction. When a contract comes before the Omaha City Council, members receive a memo. It highlights the price, the source of the money and how the low bidder compared with other bids. The memo does not mention the timeline for completing the project, and the subject rarely comes up for discussion. The timeline can be found inside the contract itself. But it usually doesn't come in the form of an actual deadline date. To lower bid prices, contracts instead are set up with a specific number of "working days." "Working day" contracts are common nationwide. The City of Omaha uses them to encourage bargain bids in two distinct ways. First, officials inflate the time limits set in contracts beyond what would be needed by major road builders such as Hawkins Construction Co. or Charles Vrana & Son Construction Co. The added days are intended to encourage bids from smaller contractors who might need more time, said Public Works Director Norm Jackman. More competition leads to lower prices, he said. Second, the city excuses some workdays while a project is under way from its official count of "working days," effectively extending the contractor's time. Some of the excused days are too cold, wet or muddy to get any work done. Some occur when utility crews stop the contractor's progress. Others are days on which weather or utilities only slowed work or limited a type of progress. Other work continued - or could have continued. City inspectors make judgments on whether to excuse a "working day" and extend the contractor's finishing time. Contractors generally are charged 100 to 150 working days a year. Outcomes vary from project to project. For comparison, The World-Herald examined the weekly reports of city inspectors on three projects during the heart of last year's construction season. The projects: Fort Street; 72nd Street from Mercy Road to Interstate 80; and 132nd Street from West Dodge Road to Blondo Street. Those records show that the three projects were charged the same number of working days in only two of the 28 weeks. Fort was assessed only 94 working days. That's 3.4 per week, and it includes 13 Saturdays. The two other projects were assessed more working days, although they also averaged less than four days a week. Much of the variance between Fort and the other projects can be traced to when the Fort contractor claimed he was held up by MUD's work. WBE was assessed no working days last year on Fort from April 4 to July 9. M.U.D. field engineer Dave Stroebele said WBE could have worked on those days and simply chose not to. "The job's a mile long," he said. "There's always something they could be doing." Scott Wiekhorst, vice president of WBE, said his company just follows the contracts it gets from the city. He noted that the city saved a lot of money on the Fort project bid. WBE's price, $4.3 million, was nearly $1 million lower than any other bid. Contractors and city inspectors agree the working day system involves gray areas. Even when contractors get charged working days by city inspectors, they can appeal to higher officials and avoid paying damages. Each contract includes damages for exceeding the "working days" limit, usually $1,000 or more per day. But city officials said it has been at least four years since a road contractor paid damages. "If a contractor tries hard enough, they can usually get out of those," said Ram Hingorani, owner of Midwest Paving. The city expects and encourages contractors to work whenever possible on days the companies have been excused from counting as working days. As the city sees it, that helps contractors get ahead of schedule. City officials applaud Hawkins, for example, because it worked some of the past two winters on 72nd Street. Through the end of July, Hawkins had used 68 percent of its working days and completed 83 percent of the work. The one-mile widening project is in its 20th month. City officials were discouraged that WBE walked away from Fort Street in spring 2003. They agreed the contractor could have worked around utility crews, but they didn't insist on it. Instead, city officials excused WBE from working days, extending the contractor's time limit for completing the project. That's why Fort is still on schedule. "If they feel like they can leave and come back and still fit within their number of working days, then that's their prerogative," O'Bryan said. "Not that we like it, but it's their decision." |
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