Denver VA Hospital building project what a mess

Professional Engineer & PE Exam Forum

Help Support Professional Engineer & PE Exam Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I have friends that do and my wife works on the campus, but for a different hospital.

 
I see a few of these will be in order for the Contractors lucky enough to have such an inept owner....



 
I was talking with an old co-worker who is now on that project. According to him, the major problem with it (in addition to the inept management of the VA) is the fact that the designer is using this as a marquee project for them and are insisting on gold plating everything with no regard to budget and the VA wont tell them no.

 
There is way too much missing from this article.

First of all, despite what the article says, the VA didn't design squat. We've got Engineers but nowhere near enough manpower to design anything close to a hospital. An A/E is hired and told "here's what we want and here's the budget". It's the A/E's job to design the building and design it to fit within the construction budget.

Second, unless it was a design-build contract, the design is already complete when it goes out for bid. If the contractor couldn't build it within the given budget, then why did they bid on the project in the first place? They got the job so obviously they must have come in under (or very close to) the construction estimate.

Not saying the VA should be held blameless. I don't know how they do things in Colorado, but here, we do design reviews with the end users where they get their chance for requests/suggestions. When the design is complete, that's it. That's what you're getting. If you want different equipment or you wanted some fancy atrium then you should have brought that up during design review. I believe I read about one instance of a change that would be due to differing site conditions (the underground spring) but other than that, it sounds like a lot of the other problems are design error and omission issues. The contractor isn't much better. If the A/E blew the estimate (their job to come up with that too) then why didn't all of the construction bids come in way over budget?

 
Last edited by a moderator:
When I was in the "owner "position we would have engineering consultants that wanted to design things so they can get in the next issue of ITE magazine or something similar and we would just have to tell them no that's not what we want all the time. However I am sure architect as they are known for likely miss lead their client about how much certain things would cost so they could also get in their publications

 
I have been on several projects funded by the Fed and State governments all to the tune of $4 mil or less. The problem is not a lack of reviews (4-5 sets per job), but that it doesnt appear that anyone reviewing it knows what they are looking at. Oh sure, they know the procedure we are to follow, how many sets of drawings they are supposed to receive and how the specifications are to be formatted, but seem to have no idea what they are really looking at. We have had some really stupid errors on drawings (both our fault and the fault of others) that get through all 5 reviews and finally noticed in the field, but by golly the specs are in the right order.

 
jeb do you know if this was traditional design-bid-build or if it was CM/GC?

If it was CM/GC I would hope the VA would have told the contractor and the architect to go pound sand..

 
I know Kiewit/Turner is only the General on it, but I don't know the contract type.

The issue as described to me is that although they should have told the architect to pound sand, the VA didn't. When Kiewit told them that the changes would add cost and time to the contract, the VA played the "don't you care about our veterans?" card, so the contractor agreed to keep working despite not having a negotiated change order. When Kiewit learned that the VA was grossly overbudget with little chance of getting the money, Kiewit sued the VA for breach of contract stating that the VA had changed the terms with no intention of paying for it. The courts agreed, so Kiewit/Turner can walk away from the job at any time if they want (and they did for a couple weeks back in February).

 
I'm not sure what kind of project it was, but usually they are design-bid-build.

The reason I'm so baffled by the whole thing is because we give projects to A/E's to design with a set budget. We've never experienced anything close to an A/E coming back and telling us, "well, you wanted it done for $XX but we went ahead and designed it at $XXX". If the A/E started pumping out Bulletins to pretty the whole thing up so their portfolio looked good and those resulted in massive change orders, then this needs to be dumped back in the A/E's lap. The whole thing pisses me off. All the blow hard politicians are lumping the VA system together. If someone at the VA was letting the A/E run the project, then the person who was letting them get away with it needs to be held accountable, not the whole system.

We had a project here that was delayed for about a year because another project that was behind schedule was in the way. The contractor submitted a massive delay claim with some backup documentation that was a bit sketchy. When we went to Contracting to negotiate, the Contracting Officer threw out $350K. I couldn't believe what was going on because we hadn't even finished going over everything yet, but the contractor accepted and that was that. A couple days later the CO sent an email asking me to submit my approval letter for the claim. I told him no. I made sure everyone above me in my office knew what was going on from my supervisor right up to the Chief of Engineering. They made sure we got something from Contracting saying that they had come up with the dollar figure and that it was against Engineering's recommendation. I didn't agree with it, but the claim was about $150K less than what they submitted so chances are nothing will come of it, but the Chief wanted to make sure our department was covered in the event that the project ever get audited.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
We've had some major change orders go back and forth for months. I could see and understand both sides of the argument and why neither side was backing down. It ultimately landed on the desk of the senior manager and he asked us for our input. He recognized that he understands our perspective, but then he asked me how much we spent arguing over it. We we look at it that way, we spent more manhours arguing it than what the change order value was worth. He then offered 60% just to have it go away and the contractor agreed.

 
So far my record for lowest change order is $348. Contractor sent it in and I asked him if he was serious because it was going to cost him more than that just to get the thing processed.

 
jeb6294 said:
I'm not sure what kind of project it was, but usually they are design-bid-build.

The reason I'm so baffled by the whole thing is because we give projects to A/E's to design with a set budget. We've never experienced anything close to an A/E coming back and telling us, "well, you wanted it done for $XX but we went ahead and designed it at $XXX". If the A/E started pumping out Bulletins to pretty the whole thing up so their portfolio looked good and those resulted in massive change orders, then this needs to be dumped back in the A/E's lap. The whole thing pisses me off. All the blow hard politicians are lumping the VA system together. If someone at the VA was letting the A/E run the project, then the person who was letting them get away with it needs to be held accountable, not the whole system.
Click to expand...


As discussed in the related thread:

With CM-At-Risk, they need to set a Guaranteed Maximum Price (which they're calling a Firm Target Price in this case) and then eventually definitize the cost-plus. According to the decision, the Estimated Construction Cost at Award (ECCA) was never fairly estimated to be under the available budget after the 65% design. And ultimately, it was determined to be breach of contract for the VA to insist they continue work. Change orders would have been the least of their problems!
Click to expand...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
jeb6294 said:
I'm not sure what kind of project it was, but usually they are design-bid-build.

The reason I'm so baffled by the whole thing is because we give projects to A/E's to design with a set budget. We've never experienced anything close to an A/E coming back and telling us, "well, you wanted it done for $XX but we went ahead and designed it at $XXX". If the A/E started pumping out Bulletins to pretty the whole thing up so their portfolio looked good and those resulted in massive change orders, then this needs to be dumped back in the A/E's lap. The whole thing pisses me off. All the blow hard politicians are lumping the VA system together. If someone at the VA was letting the A/E run the project, then the person who was letting them get away with it needs to be held accountable, not the whole system.

We had a project here that was delayed for about a year because another project that was behind schedule was in the way. The contractor submitted a massive delay claim with some backup documentation that was a bit sketchy. When we went to Contracting to negotiate, the Contracting Officer threw out $350K. I couldn't believe what was going on because we hadn't even finished going over everything yet, but the contractor accepted and that was that. A couple days later the CO sent an email asking me to submit my approval letter for the claim. I told him no. I made sure everyone above me in my office knew what was going on from my supervisor right up to the Chief of Engineering. They made sure we got something from Contracting saying that they had come up with the dollar figure and that it was against Engineering's recommendation. I didn't agree with it, but the claim was about $150K less than what they submitted so chances are nothing will come of it, but the Chief wanted to make sure our department was covered in the event that the project ever get audited.
Click to expand...
Maybe your CO has some set cost in mind of what it takes to litigate or arbitrate a claim, and maybe even worked with your attorney to determine that it would be cheaper to just settle, regardless of being in the right. I've been in similar situations and had that told to me, which just sucks.

 

Similar threads

Glenn Meadows
Stamping residential plans or small commercial projects as a structural PE and sole practitioner
Replies
1
Views
821
Myph033
Myph033
S
Passed the Power PE Exam on my first try!!
Replies
2
Views
5K
main197
M
A
Would like some studying advice
2
Replies
38
Views
9K
akyip
A
Road Guy
Teachers Strikes & Walkouts
Replies
18
Views
879
Road Guy
Road Guy
B
BAE Systems currently has a vacancy for a Senior Project Manager – Engineering in Rochester, UK
Replies
0
Views
610
btbsilent
B

Latest posts

Back
Top