Secrecy of Negotiations Worries Officials, Critics
By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 23, 2007; Page B01
If Virginia transportation officials and a private contractor resolve their differences over costs and strike a deal to build the Metrorail extension to Dulles International Airport, Northern Virginia commuters and landowners paying most of the $4 billion bill are likely to know very little about the terms of the agreement.
A state law intended to bring big-ticket road and rail projects to fruition quickly and cheaply also grants the parties involved an unusual level of secrecy in their negotiations. The lack of transparency could make it difficult to evaluate the financial risks that accompany such complex public works, such as cost overruns and scheduling delays, some local officials and critics say.
Secrecy is not the only issue surrounding the Public-Private Transportation Act of 1995. The law was designed to jump-start expensive road and transit projects by attracting private-sector investment and corporate efficiency to the process. It allows the state to dispense with traditional competitive bidding and select a single private partner to design and build a project for a fixed price and profit.
It hasn't quite worked that way. The private contractor, Dulles Transit Partners -- a construction consortium of Bechtel Inc. and Washington Group International -- has put no money into construction of the extension's first phase, which would run from just east of the West Falls Church Metro station to Wiehle Avenue in Reston by 2012. The consortium will be reimbursed for the $15 million it has spent on preliminary engineering work if it reaches an agreement with the state.
Other public-private projects completed or underway, including Route 28 interchanges in Fairfax County and a portion of Route 288 in Powhatan and Goochland counties, also involve little or no private money. The Dulles extension, the first rail project proposed under the public-private law, would be funded entirely with federal, state and local dollars, including more than $1 billion from Fairfax landowners, businesses along the Dulles Toll Road and motorists who use the road.
"There are some real significant issues of secrecy, accountability, conflict of interest and failure to protect the public trust," said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, which advocates clustered development around transit stations.
Howard Menaker, a Dulles Transit Partners spokesman, said that he could not speak specifically about the lack of investment in the rail project but said that all public-private ventures evolve differently. He also said that although he wasn't familiar with the specifics of the public-private partnership, such arrangements help companies protect fee structures and business strategies that would be valuable to competitors.
"This is the level of confidentiality that the legislature felt was appropriate at the time they passed the public-private partnership act," Menaker said. "I'm not going to second-guess the legislature."
The concerns about secrecy are compounded by a conflict over how the rail line will run through Tysons Corner. Current plans call for an elevated track down the middle of Route 7. The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and TysonsTunnel.org, a coalition organized by the McLean Chamber of Commerce, are urging that the process be opened for consideration of a tunnel, which they say would enhance Tysons' evolution into a mature urban center.
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) has resisted the tunnel option, and an engineering report commissioned by the state concluded that it would be too expensive, time-consuming and technically risky. State officials also say that the delays necessary to consider a tunnel place $900 million in federal funds at risk.
Tunnel advocates say that with the construction consortium's price for the aerial option under wraps, the state's claim of a higher cost for the tunnel is not credible.
"We have all the documents [supporting] the tunnel in the public domain," said Schwartz, referring to a $3.5 million engineering study funded by TysonsTunnel.org.
Fairfax County board members also expressed concern about having key design elements peeled away in negotiations to meet federal cost guidelines. Supervisor T. Dana Kauffman (D-Lee) said one early cost-saving measure that surfaced was a shrinking of pedestrian walkways "into glorified cattle chutes."
All of the debate over the project assumes that the extension gets built in any form. State officials and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which would manage the project, are threatening to end talks with the consortium if terms can't be reached by April 5. Officials say the consortium's cost estimates are too high and must come down to meet strict federal cost-effectiveness criteria.
If the sides do sign a construction contract, many terms and details normally in public view will be treated as though they were national security directives. Under a 2004 agreement between the consortium and the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, documents dealing with cost estimates, scheduling, overruns, markups, overhead and profit will be regarded as trade secrets and "sealed jointly" by the consortium and the state transportation agency for delivery to an escrow agent. If there are disputes, the materials can be reviewed -- jointly only -- with 10 days' written notice.
The documents "are and shall always remain" the construction consortium's property, according to the agreement. Six months after final payment to the consortium and the resolution of any outstanding disputes, the materials will be destroyed. Moreover, the airports authority is exempt from the state's freedom of information act, making public access to the documents even more difficult.
A handful of Fairfax County officials, including Richard F. Stevens, the Dulles project coordinator with the Fairfax County Department of Transportation, have been required to sign confidentiality agreements in exchange for access to the pricing documents. Stevens declined to discuss the agreement, and it is not clear to what extent he and other staff members will be able to brief elected officials on details of the construction contract if and when it is signed.
Elected officials in Northern Virginia are anxious that they will, in effect, be signing a check without having a chance to look at the bill.
"We're very fearful that they've been able to use the cloak of secrecy [that the public-private act] provides to prevent public penetration of the contractual aspects of this project," said Gerald E. Connolly (D), chairman of the Fairfax County board. Members are especially apprehensive about "change orders," or alterations in the project's design for budgetary or engineering reasons. "We're going to be handed a bill and told to ante up," he said.
Matthew O. Tucker, director of the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, downplayed secrecy concerns. He said there have been more than two dozen technical and advisory group meetings involving the local stakeholders, including Fairfax and Loudoun counties, the airports authority and Metro. "All of these major civil projects come together in different ways," he said. "From that perspective, I don't see this as anything outside of the ordinary."
Tucker said that none of this should surprise local officials. It was all part of the preliminary accord reached by the consortium and the state in 2004. "Everyone had a full understanding as to what this process was and is."
Fairfax officials said the meetings that Tucker described were updates on progress, not deep drillings into details.
But Tucker's response raises the question: Why did local officials buy into a project under the public-private partnership act?
Kauffman, a member of the Metro board and an advocate for the tunnel, said it was seen as the only way to finance such an expensive undertaking. "So it was presented basically as, 'Begin this dance, or there is no project.' "
Fairfax representatives say their concerns are not without precedent.
"Just look north," said Kauffman, referring to Bechtel's management of Boston's $14.6 billion "Big Dig" highway project, originally budgeted at $7.7 billion. In 2004, Massachusetts officials filed a $146 million lawsuit against Bechtel and Parsons Brinckerhoff, alleging that the contractors concealed actual cost estimates from the state to keep the project on track.
Bechtel officials say that the suit, still pending, is without merit.
Dulles Rail Timeline
The project to build a Metrorail extension to Dulles International Airport is over budget and behind schedule. Here are some key benchmarks:
February 2007: Initial deadline for the regional airports authority and project contractors to reach an agreement on a price for the first phase of the project, from a point just east of the West Falls Church Metro station to Wiehle Avenue in Reston.
April 5: New deadline.
May 2008: Deadline for Virginia to submit completed plans to qualify for $900 million in federal money.
Late 2008: Anticipated start of construction.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
July 31, 2006 ASCE Panel says tunnel is feasible for Tysons Corner
Media Contact(s):
Joan Buhrman ASCE (703) 295-6406
jbuhrman@asce.org
Scott Kasprowicz Deputy Secretary of Transportation
(804) 786-8032
July 31, 2006
Independent Panel of Engineers Confirms Feasibility, Cost Estimates and Schedule Impacts for Proposed Tunnel Portion of Metrorail Extension to Dulles International Airport
Reston, Va.—The American Society of Civil Engineers' (ASCE) Dulles Metrorail Tunnel Review Panel (TRP) today released the findings of their two month evaluation of engineering options for the Tysons Corner segment of the proposed Metrorail extension to Dulles International Airport. As a result of this technical review, the TRP stated that it would be feasible to construct the Metrorail system through the Tysons Corner area using a large bore tunnel, and that there was a relatively small difference in cost and schedule between the two options (large bore tunnel and largely aerial plan).
During a press conference releasing the report, Robert S. O'Neil, the TRP's chair, explained that Commonwealth of Virginia Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer "did not ask our panel to recommend the preferred option. Instead, the Secretary asked our panel to ensure that the state had the best information available with which to make its decision. However... considering the magnitude and long-term impact of this project, and considering that the intangible benefits almost entirely favor the tunnel, it is reasonable to conclude that our findings suggest strong consideration of the tunnel alternative."
The TRP, which was formed by ASCE at the request of Secretary Homer, assessed the geology, tunnel alignment and physical limitations on the construction of the tunnel, as well as conducted a review of the project's estimates and proposals. In their report, the TRP stated that $2.5 billion would be a reasonable total cost to construct Phase 1 of the Dulles Metrorail Extension with a large bore tunnel through Tysons Corner. They also stated that after a similar review of the estimates for the largely aerial option, they believed the likely cost for the aerial alignment to be $2.25 billion.
In their review, the TRP noted that the expected duration of construction, installation and testing work for both alternatives would be comparable, but that the start of large bore tunnel solution would be delayed by up to one year to complete sufficient Preliminary Engineering and secure National Environmental Policy Act and equivalent State legislation approval. They also noted several cost saving features of the tunnel's lesser surface impacts, including a reduction in cost by at least $30 million for less permanent utility and temporary construction easements; and a savings of as much as $40 million due to lesser utility relocation and support costs. Other cost saving features of the tunnel option included: the large bore tunnel alternative allows for significant savings in operation and maintenance costs, an estimated $5 million per year (in current dollars); and, while they have not been calculated, life cycle cost savings would favor the tunnel. In addition, the TRP noted that optimizing competition, establishing financial incentives and risk-sharing in procurement actions would have high potential for eliminating excessive contingencies from pricing—yielding lower capital costs.
The aerial alternative, which the TRP noted would have half the expected life span of the tunnel (60 and 120 years, respectively), would also generate serious negative traffic and business access impacts during construction along routes 7 and 123, as well as Interstate 495, concurrent with the HOT Lane construction. While the large bore tunnel would have a much smaller impact in those areas, it would have substantial construction impact on median of Dulles Access Road, generating heavy truck traffic for the removal of tunnel muck created during boring, and for delivery and staging of pre-cast tunnel lining segments. The TRP concluded that despite being potential sources of project risk, the impacts would be manageable.
The TRP concluded that while it was clear that the aerial option could be done cheaper and faster, the large bore tunnel alternative would allow for a more integrated development of Tysons Corner. With more attractive development in place, and with greater development density allowed by the tunnel alternative, the TRP noted that it would be reasonable to assume that the tunnel option would provide a greater long-term economic and business impact than the aerial option.
The TRP's report is available for download on ASCE's Web site at LINK.
ASCE is widely known for its infrastructure assessments and reports, including Building Performance Assessments of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Murrah Federal Building, and its technical assessments following earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters. Founded in 1852, ASCE represents more than 139,000 civil engineers worldwide and is America's oldest national engineering society.
Joan Buhrman ASCE (703) 295-6406
jbuhrman@asce.org
Scott Kasprowicz Deputy Secretary of Transportation
(804) 786-8032
July 31, 2006
Independent Panel of Engineers Confirms Feasibility, Cost Estimates and Schedule Impacts for Proposed Tunnel Portion of Metrorail Extension to Dulles International Airport
Reston, Va.—The American Society of Civil Engineers' (ASCE) Dulles Metrorail Tunnel Review Panel (TRP) today released the findings of their two month evaluation of engineering options for the Tysons Corner segment of the proposed Metrorail extension to Dulles International Airport. As a result of this technical review, the TRP stated that it would be feasible to construct the Metrorail system through the Tysons Corner area using a large bore tunnel, and that there was a relatively small difference in cost and schedule between the two options (large bore tunnel and largely aerial plan).
During a press conference releasing the report, Robert S. O'Neil, the TRP's chair, explained that Commonwealth of Virginia Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer "did not ask our panel to recommend the preferred option. Instead, the Secretary asked our panel to ensure that the state had the best information available with which to make its decision. However... considering the magnitude and long-term impact of this project, and considering that the intangible benefits almost entirely favor the tunnel, it is reasonable to conclude that our findings suggest strong consideration of the tunnel alternative."
The TRP, which was formed by ASCE at the request of Secretary Homer, assessed the geology, tunnel alignment and physical limitations on the construction of the tunnel, as well as conducted a review of the project's estimates and proposals. In their report, the TRP stated that $2.5 billion would be a reasonable total cost to construct Phase 1 of the Dulles Metrorail Extension with a large bore tunnel through Tysons Corner. They also stated that after a similar review of the estimates for the largely aerial option, they believed the likely cost for the aerial alignment to be $2.25 billion.
In their review, the TRP noted that the expected duration of construction, installation and testing work for both alternatives would be comparable, but that the start of large bore tunnel solution would be delayed by up to one year to complete sufficient Preliminary Engineering and secure National Environmental Policy Act and equivalent State legislation approval. They also noted several cost saving features of the tunnel's lesser surface impacts, including a reduction in cost by at least $30 million for less permanent utility and temporary construction easements; and a savings of as much as $40 million due to lesser utility relocation and support costs. Other cost saving features of the tunnel option included: the large bore tunnel alternative allows for significant savings in operation and maintenance costs, an estimated $5 million per year (in current dollars); and, while they have not been calculated, life cycle cost savings would favor the tunnel. In addition, the TRP noted that optimizing competition, establishing financial incentives and risk-sharing in procurement actions would have high potential for eliminating excessive contingencies from pricing—yielding lower capital costs.
The aerial alternative, which the TRP noted would have half the expected life span of the tunnel (60 and 120 years, respectively), would also generate serious negative traffic and business access impacts during construction along routes 7 and 123, as well as Interstate 495, concurrent with the HOT Lane construction. While the large bore tunnel would have a much smaller impact in those areas, it would have substantial construction impact on median of Dulles Access Road, generating heavy truck traffic for the removal of tunnel muck created during boring, and for delivery and staging of pre-cast tunnel lining segments. The TRP concluded that despite being potential sources of project risk, the impacts would be manageable.
The TRP concluded that while it was clear that the aerial option could be done cheaper and faster, the large bore tunnel alternative would allow for a more integrated development of Tysons Corner. With more attractive development in place, and with greater development density allowed by the tunnel alternative, the TRP noted that it would be reasonable to assume that the tunnel option would provide a greater long-term economic and business impact than the aerial option.
The TRP's report is available for download on ASCE's Web site at LINK.
ASCE is widely known for its infrastructure assessments and reports, including Building Performance Assessments of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Murrah Federal Building, and its technical assessments following earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters. Founded in 1852, ASCE represents more than 139,000 civil engineers worldwide and is America's oldest national engineering society.
March 18, 2007 (Gotthard rail tunnel) A tunnel of superlatives
Following article was published by the Toronto Star.
Switzerland's Gotthard rail line will bore through the Alps for 57 km. If we can do this, can we beat global warming?
Mar 18, 2007 04:30 AM
by Bill Taylor
The Swiss are not generally given to hyperbole, but a new tunnel being carved under the Alps has already been hailed as "the crowning achievement of the 21st century."
Journalist Rolf Ribi also describes it as "a tunnel of superlatives." At 57 kilometres, the big dig on Switzerland's Gotthard railway line between Erstfeld and Bodio will be the longest in the world. "Never," Ribi enthuses, "has a tunnel been dug so far into a mountain."
It makes the Big Becky tunnel project in Niagara Falls and a whole Top 10 of Canadian projects, as listed by ReNew Canada: The Infrastructure Renewal Magazine, seem puny. They range from a $4.25-billion refurbishment of the Bruce nuclear power station in Kincardine to improvements to the Sea to Sky Highway between Vancouver and Whistler.
The new rail line, costing 18 billion Swiss francs (about $17 billion), is set to open in 2016. Crews at either end began boring toward the middle in 1993. When their 10-metre diameter augers meet, the drill bits – according to the now-inevitable computer model – will be less than 20 centimetres off-centre.
When the world was younger and more innocent, that awesomeness would have been more than enough to induce superstitious fear in the populace.
It's why the medieval architects of Europe's great cathedrals, from Salisbury to Florence, Paris to Seville, built them massive: not only to the greater glory of their god, but to keep the rank-and-file in line. Anyone who could construct something so awe-inspiringly majestic was clearly not a person to cross.
Thinking big was more than just personal insurance for the hereafter; it was an effective social breakwater. The great unwashed stayed at the king's feet rather than at his throat.
We're less gullible now. We look at the hole in the ground where the Bay-Adelaide Centre will go and we know how it's done. Far from inspiring awe, it's more likely to move us to rumblings – "another highrise?!" – of dissent.
We may not fully understand the engineering principles involved, but we can go online for an explanation and we know there's no angelic intervention involved. Just as we know the gargoyles on Old City Hall are a draftsman's whim, not creatures to ward off evil spirits.
Is there a genetic quirk at play here? An ancient urge to create edifices? A human – and humanizing – proclivity to co-operate in giving a monumental idea concrete form and function? To think big and thus get big things done. We work together well on construction. Not only cathedrals but domed stadiums and the CN Tower and the bridge to P.E.I.; nameless dams and unheralded power plants and convoluted highway interchanges beyond number.
And sometimes something as mind-bogglingly complex as the seven older and helical – that is, shaped like a coil – tunnels of the Gotthard railway. This was 19th-century technology, done without benefit of computer simulations. Real reality from the word go, as opposed to the virtual kind.
To cut a spiral into a mountain, constantly turning and changing elevation, using nothing but dead reckoning... an engineering tour-de-force that might still bring a credulous man to his knees. It has impressed UNESCO enough to likely be named as a World Cultural Heritage site.
The new tunnel – which is actually two single-line bores – runs dead straight and almost horizontal. (The helical tunnels allowed trains to climb quite steeply in a relatively short space.) The twin tubes will be connected every few hundred metres in case there's an emergency in one and the other is needed as an escape route.
Passenger trains, flashing blindly beneath some of the world's most dramatic mountainscapes at 250 km/h, will cut an hour off the 3 1/2-hour Zurich-Milan journey time. Freight trains will carry double their present loads at 160 km/h. Engineering ingenuity fuelled by the demands of commerce. A tunnel of superlatives.
It remains to be seen whether humanity can marshal its collective resources to build a solution to a more nebulous but utterly mountainous problem: global warming.
Billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson is devoting the next 10 years' profits from his Virgin trains and airliners (jets, paradoxically, are a significant contributor to the problem) to finding a solution and, literally, save the planet. Will this estimated $3.5 billion be sufficient to pay for developing the necessary expertise, leadership and political volition, or will it only buy us a little time?
In the grander scheme of things, we've been like just so many little kids, bent on building bigger sandcastles. And with a construction project, you start with "this" and then you do "that" and you continue step by logical step until it's done. There's a beginning and an end.
Calamity knows no such logic. Can a genius for creating wonders of the world be turned to dealing with pandemic intangibles? The evidence so far is that we can't even achieve consensus on what to do first. Someone says "this," someone else says "no." They say "that" and we, in turn, raise objections.
We're like the donkey in the fable, with two bundles of hay to choose from. Unable to decide which to eat first, it starved.
The important thing is to start. Somewhere. Or are we doomed to grasp the fearful implications of climate change but be unable to build a metaphoric dam against the coming cataclysm?
Maybe the best we can hope for is a state-of-the-art Ark. The crowning achievement of the 21st century, instead of being our own salvation, will remain a tunnel the like of which we've never seen. That perhaps, by century's end, no one will use. Except as hopeless shelter from the man-made storm.
Switzerland's Gotthard rail line will bore through the Alps for 57 km. If we can do this, can we beat global warming?
Mar 18, 2007 04:30 AM
by Bill Taylor
The Swiss are not generally given to hyperbole, but a new tunnel being carved under the Alps has already been hailed as "the crowning achievement of the 21st century."
Journalist Rolf Ribi also describes it as "a tunnel of superlatives." At 57 kilometres, the big dig on Switzerland's Gotthard railway line between Erstfeld and Bodio will be the longest in the world. "Never," Ribi enthuses, "has a tunnel been dug so far into a mountain."
It makes the Big Becky tunnel project in Niagara Falls and a whole Top 10 of Canadian projects, as listed by ReNew Canada: The Infrastructure Renewal Magazine, seem puny. They range from a $4.25-billion refurbishment of the Bruce nuclear power station in Kincardine to improvements to the Sea to Sky Highway between Vancouver and Whistler.
The new rail line, costing 18 billion Swiss francs (about $17 billion), is set to open in 2016. Crews at either end began boring toward the middle in 1993. When their 10-metre diameter augers meet, the drill bits – according to the now-inevitable computer model – will be less than 20 centimetres off-centre.
When the world was younger and more innocent, that awesomeness would have been more than enough to induce superstitious fear in the populace.
It's why the medieval architects of Europe's great cathedrals, from Salisbury to Florence, Paris to Seville, built them massive: not only to the greater glory of their god, but to keep the rank-and-file in line. Anyone who could construct something so awe-inspiringly majestic was clearly not a person to cross.
Thinking big was more than just personal insurance for the hereafter; it was an effective social breakwater. The great unwashed stayed at the king's feet rather than at his throat.
We're less gullible now. We look at the hole in the ground where the Bay-Adelaide Centre will go and we know how it's done. Far from inspiring awe, it's more likely to move us to rumblings – "another highrise?!" – of dissent.
We may not fully understand the engineering principles involved, but we can go online for an explanation and we know there's no angelic intervention involved. Just as we know the gargoyles on Old City Hall are a draftsman's whim, not creatures to ward off evil spirits.
Is there a genetic quirk at play here? An ancient urge to create edifices? A human – and humanizing – proclivity to co-operate in giving a monumental idea concrete form and function? To think big and thus get big things done. We work together well on construction. Not only cathedrals but domed stadiums and the CN Tower and the bridge to P.E.I.; nameless dams and unheralded power plants and convoluted highway interchanges beyond number.
And sometimes something as mind-bogglingly complex as the seven older and helical – that is, shaped like a coil – tunnels of the Gotthard railway. This was 19th-century technology, done without benefit of computer simulations. Real reality from the word go, as opposed to the virtual kind.
To cut a spiral into a mountain, constantly turning and changing elevation, using nothing but dead reckoning... an engineering tour-de-force that might still bring a credulous man to his knees. It has impressed UNESCO enough to likely be named as a World Cultural Heritage site.
The new tunnel – which is actually two single-line bores – runs dead straight and almost horizontal. (The helical tunnels allowed trains to climb quite steeply in a relatively short space.) The twin tubes will be connected every few hundred metres in case there's an emergency in one and the other is needed as an escape route.
Passenger trains, flashing blindly beneath some of the world's most dramatic mountainscapes at 250 km/h, will cut an hour off the 3 1/2-hour Zurich-Milan journey time. Freight trains will carry double their present loads at 160 km/h. Engineering ingenuity fuelled by the demands of commerce. A tunnel of superlatives.
It remains to be seen whether humanity can marshal its collective resources to build a solution to a more nebulous but utterly mountainous problem: global warming.
Billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson is devoting the next 10 years' profits from his Virgin trains and airliners (jets, paradoxically, are a significant contributor to the problem) to finding a solution and, literally, save the planet. Will this estimated $3.5 billion be sufficient to pay for developing the necessary expertise, leadership and political volition, or will it only buy us a little time?
In the grander scheme of things, we've been like just so many little kids, bent on building bigger sandcastles. And with a construction project, you start with "this" and then you do "that" and you continue step by logical step until it's done. There's a beginning and an end.
Calamity knows no such logic. Can a genius for creating wonders of the world be turned to dealing with pandemic intangibles? The evidence so far is that we can't even achieve consensus on what to do first. Someone says "this," someone else says "no." They say "that" and we, in turn, raise objections.
We're like the donkey in the fable, with two bundles of hay to choose from. Unable to decide which to eat first, it starved.
The important thing is to start. Somewhere. Or are we doomed to grasp the fearful implications of climate change but be unable to build a metaphoric dam against the coming cataclysm?
Maybe the best we can hope for is a state-of-the-art Ark. The crowning achievement of the 21st century, instead of being our own salvation, will remain a tunnel the like of which we've never seen. That perhaps, by century's end, no one will use. Except as hopeless shelter from the man-made storm.
March 20, 2007 Swiss dig world's longest tunnel
Following article was published by BBC.
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
Swiss dig world's longest tunnel
By Imogen Foulkes
Amsteg tunnel (photo courtesy AlpTransit Gotthard Ltd). The new link will cut Zurich-Milan journey times dramatically
For centuries, the Alps have served as a natural trade barrier between northern and southern Europe. Sending Italian wine to the Netherlands, or German washing machines to Greece, means a long, slow journey along narrow alpine valleys, through tunnels and over passes.
The amount of freight crossing the Alps in heavy goods vehicles has risen sharply over the last two decades. In 1990 an estimated 40m tonnes went by road, in 2001 that had risen to 90m tonnes, with further big increases expected by 2010. But concerns for the Alpine environment and fears over safety have led to big pressure to move freight off the roads and onto the railways.
Both Switzerland's Gotthard road tunnel and France's Mont Blanc road tunnel have suffered major fires in the last 10 years in which many died.
Faster than flying
As long ago as 1994, the Swiss voted in a nationwide referendum to put all freight crossing their country onto the railways. Naturally, such an ambitious plan was not going to happen overnight, but now the project dubbed the engineering feat of the 21st Century is slowly taking shape.
Map: tunnel route
Deep beneath the Alps, the Swiss are building a high-speed rail link between Zurich and Milan. It will include, at 57 kilometres (35 miles), the world's longest tunnel.
A key feature of the project, which is new to alpine transport, is the fact that the entire railway line will stay at the same altitude of 500 metres (1,650ft) above sea level. This will allow trains using the line to reach speeds of 240km/h (149mph), reducing the travel time between Zurich and Milan from today's four hours to just two-and-a-half. That would make the journey faster than flying.
To see the work in progress, it is necessary to travel two kilometres underground, to the construction site between the southern Swiss towns of Faido and Biasca.
The scale of the work going on is enormous: 2,000 people are working on the tunnel, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Besides the two main railway tubes, the construction workers have to dig access tunnels for people and equipment. Huge fans ensure a fresh supply of air and cool things down. Yet the temperature is above 30C.
"We've got two-and-a-half kilometres of Alps above us," explains engineer Arthur Schmid. "That means millions and millions of cubic tonnes of earth pressing down on us, that increases the pressure and the temperature."
Difficult work
It also means that every time the workers dig out another few metres of the tunnel, mother nature tries to close it up again. Along the tunnel's length, reinforced steel rings have to be inserted, to prevent it collapsing in on itself.
Graphic: Tunnel cross-section
Building the tunnel requires a variety of techniques. At one section the workers are blasting away the rock, and the air reeks of ammonia from the explosives. At another section the world's biggest tunnel-boring machine is in operation; it is ten metres in diameter and covered in dozens of rock-cutting blades, which as the machine turns, hack away at the rock face.
"With this machine, in good conditions, we can excavate 40 metres in a day," says Mr Schmid. "That's an absolute record."
But conditions are not always good. The tunnel workers have run into serious geological problems; in some areas the rock is as soft as butter, making digging it out more complicated. "In poor rock conditions, where the rock is very soft, we can only excavate around half a metre a day," says Mr Schmid. "So in these situations, the work is delayed, and the costs rise."
Soaring costs
In fact the price tag for the entire rail link has soared from about $8bn (£4bn) to almost $15bn and final completion is unlikely to be before 2018.
But that has not stopped the alpine communities from supporting the project, and from trying to ensure that the rail link brings some social benefits too.
The tiny village of Sedrun, population 1,500, lies along the tunnel's route, and while residents are pleased to be relieved of the heavy lorries, they are concerned that the tunnel may marginalise their community.
"The thing about this tunnel is that it makes the Alps disappear," explains local architect Arthur Loretz. "At the moment, when you drive from Zurich to Milan, you get a beautiful panoramic view. But this tunnel turns the Alps into a big black hole."
Alpine gateway
The original plans for the tunnel involved trains rushing beneath the Alps without stopping. But in Sedrun a 1,000-metre elevator and underground railway station have been built just to get the workers to the construction site.
Graphic: tunnel design
"All the infrastructure is already there," points out Arthur Loretz. "What we want to do is use it in the future." The plan is to create a station, deep in the mountains, known as "Porta Alpina" (Gateway to the Alps). Tourists will be able to arrive by train in the Alps in record time, and then be whisked up to fresh mountain air by way of the world's longest elevator.
"I think it will have great benefits," says Mr Loretz. "Not just for tourists, but for us. Look, over that mountain people speak Italian, and over that one there they speak German." "And here we speak Reto Romansch - a language only spoken by around 50,000 people. Traditionally the mountains have divided us, but with this rail link, and with Porta Alpina, we can bring people together."
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
Swiss dig world's longest tunnel
By Imogen Foulkes
Amsteg tunnel (photo courtesy AlpTransit Gotthard Ltd). The new link will cut Zurich-Milan journey times dramaticallyFor centuries, the Alps have served as a natural trade barrier between northern and southern Europe. Sending Italian wine to the Netherlands, or German washing machines to Greece, means a long, slow journey along narrow alpine valleys, through tunnels and over passes.
The amount of freight crossing the Alps in heavy goods vehicles has risen sharply over the last two decades. In 1990 an estimated 40m tonnes went by road, in 2001 that had risen to 90m tonnes, with further big increases expected by 2010. But concerns for the Alpine environment and fears over safety have led to big pressure to move freight off the roads and onto the railways.
Both Switzerland's Gotthard road tunnel and France's Mont Blanc road tunnel have suffered major fires in the last 10 years in which many died.
Faster than flying
As long ago as 1994, the Swiss voted in a nationwide referendum to put all freight crossing their country onto the railways. Naturally, such an ambitious plan was not going to happen overnight, but now the project dubbed the engineering feat of the 21st Century is slowly taking shape.
Map: tunnel routeDeep beneath the Alps, the Swiss are building a high-speed rail link between Zurich and Milan. It will include, at 57 kilometres (35 miles), the world's longest tunnel.
A key feature of the project, which is new to alpine transport, is the fact that the entire railway line will stay at the same altitude of 500 metres (1,650ft) above sea level. This will allow trains using the line to reach speeds of 240km/h (149mph), reducing the travel time between Zurich and Milan from today's four hours to just two-and-a-half. That would make the journey faster than flying.
To see the work in progress, it is necessary to travel two kilometres underground, to the construction site between the southern Swiss towns of Faido and Biasca.
The scale of the work going on is enormous: 2,000 people are working on the tunnel, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Besides the two main railway tubes, the construction workers have to dig access tunnels for people and equipment. Huge fans ensure a fresh supply of air and cool things down. Yet the temperature is above 30C.
"We've got two-and-a-half kilometres of Alps above us," explains engineer Arthur Schmid. "That means millions and millions of cubic tonnes of earth pressing down on us, that increases the pressure and the temperature."
Difficult work
It also means that every time the workers dig out another few metres of the tunnel, mother nature tries to close it up again. Along the tunnel's length, reinforced steel rings have to be inserted, to prevent it collapsing in on itself.
Graphic: Tunnel cross-sectionBuilding the tunnel requires a variety of techniques. At one section the workers are blasting away the rock, and the air reeks of ammonia from the explosives. At another section the world's biggest tunnel-boring machine is in operation; it is ten metres in diameter and covered in dozens of rock-cutting blades, which as the machine turns, hack away at the rock face.
"With this machine, in good conditions, we can excavate 40 metres in a day," says Mr Schmid. "That's an absolute record."
But conditions are not always good. The tunnel workers have run into serious geological problems; in some areas the rock is as soft as butter, making digging it out more complicated. "In poor rock conditions, where the rock is very soft, we can only excavate around half a metre a day," says Mr Schmid. "So in these situations, the work is delayed, and the costs rise."
Soaring costs
In fact the price tag for the entire rail link has soared from about $8bn (£4bn) to almost $15bn and final completion is unlikely to be before 2018.
But that has not stopped the alpine communities from supporting the project, and from trying to ensure that the rail link brings some social benefits too.
The tiny village of Sedrun, population 1,500, lies along the tunnel's route, and while residents are pleased to be relieved of the heavy lorries, they are concerned that the tunnel may marginalise their community.
"The thing about this tunnel is that it makes the Alps disappear," explains local architect Arthur Loretz. "At the moment, when you drive from Zurich to Milan, you get a beautiful panoramic view. But this tunnel turns the Alps into a big black hole."
Alpine gateway
The original plans for the tunnel involved trains rushing beneath the Alps without stopping. But in Sedrun a 1,000-metre elevator and underground railway station have been built just to get the workers to the construction site.
Graphic: tunnel design"All the infrastructure is already there," points out Arthur Loretz. "What we want to do is use it in the future." The plan is to create a station, deep in the mountains, known as "Porta Alpina" (Gateway to the Alps). Tourists will be able to arrive by train in the Alps in record time, and then be whisked up to fresh mountain air by way of the world's longest elevator.
"I think it will have great benefits," says Mr Loretz. "Not just for tourists, but for us. Look, over that mountain people speak Italian, and over that one there they speak German." "And here we speak Reto Romansch - a language only spoken by around 50,000 people. Traditionally the mountains have divided us, but with this rail link, and with Porta Alpina, we can bring people together."
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
March 14, 2007 (UK) Hydrogen is Already Having an Impact on the Automotive Market
Wednesday March 14
CAMBRIDGE, England, March 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Despite commercial deployment being at least two decades away, hydrogen powered vehicles are already having an impact on today's automobile market. This is one of the conclusions of a report published this week by Cambridge, UK based analysts CarbonFree. The report highlights examples of automobile manufacturers and energy companies experimenting with hydrogen powered automobiles to add a shade of green to their existing brands. However, CarbonFree warns it would be difficult for incumbent players to commercialise these next generation vehicles without cannibalising revenue from existing products.
The tipping point for the automobile industry, according to the report, will occur when oil companies attempt to exploit unconventional sources of oil such as shale and tar sands. CarbonFree sees the cost of this process, in financial and environmental terms, forcing the industry to look for alternatives, and the work already carried out on hydrogen and electric vehicles merely serving to open up the market to new entrants.
The report, "Driving In Neutral", suggests that the basic structure of the automobile market will change little over the next 20 years, with biofuels being used to postpone peak oil and to help governments achieve emission reduction targets. However, the report sees the environmental and geopolitical implications of large-scale biofuel production replacing one form of energy insecurity with another.
Today, governments are attempting to limit private motoring at a time when manufacturers are spending billions of dollars promoting automobile ownership. CarbonFree explains that governments are also attempting to address a number of other controversial issues regarding automobile use, such as the growing number of elderly people who are no longer able to drive. Governments will, according to CarbonFree, avoid direct confrontation with the automobile lobby and instead support schemes, such as car clubs, which exploit the success of the social networking aspect of the Internet. However, the report points out that emotions and motoring must somehow be separated, and, until they are, governments face similar challenges to the ones they encountered when dissuading people from smoking.
"Driving In Neutral - New Automobile Ownership, Fuelling And Use Models" is available from CarbonFree. http://www.carbonfree.co.uk
About CarbonFree
CarbonFree carries out research and analysis in a wide range of alternative energy related fields and disseminates results in its highly focussed CarbonFree reports.
CAMBRIDGE, England, March 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Despite commercial deployment being at least two decades away, hydrogen powered vehicles are already having an impact on today's automobile market. This is one of the conclusions of a report published this week by Cambridge, UK based analysts CarbonFree. The report highlights examples of automobile manufacturers and energy companies experimenting with hydrogen powered automobiles to add a shade of green to their existing brands. However, CarbonFree warns it would be difficult for incumbent players to commercialise these next generation vehicles without cannibalising revenue from existing products.
The tipping point for the automobile industry, according to the report, will occur when oil companies attempt to exploit unconventional sources of oil such as shale and tar sands. CarbonFree sees the cost of this process, in financial and environmental terms, forcing the industry to look for alternatives, and the work already carried out on hydrogen and electric vehicles merely serving to open up the market to new entrants.
The report, "Driving In Neutral", suggests that the basic structure of the automobile market will change little over the next 20 years, with biofuels being used to postpone peak oil and to help governments achieve emission reduction targets. However, the report sees the environmental and geopolitical implications of large-scale biofuel production replacing one form of energy insecurity with another.
Today, governments are attempting to limit private motoring at a time when manufacturers are spending billions of dollars promoting automobile ownership. CarbonFree explains that governments are also attempting to address a number of other controversial issues regarding automobile use, such as the growing number of elderly people who are no longer able to drive. Governments will, according to CarbonFree, avoid direct confrontation with the automobile lobby and instead support schemes, such as car clubs, which exploit the success of the social networking aspect of the Internet. However, the report points out that emotions and motoring must somehow be separated, and, until they are, governments face similar challenges to the ones they encountered when dissuading people from smoking.
"Driving In Neutral - New Automobile Ownership, Fuelling And Use Models" is available from CarbonFree. http://www.carbonfree.co.uk
About CarbonFree
CarbonFree carries out research and analysis in a wide range of alternative energy related fields and disseminates results in its highly focussed CarbonFree reports.
June 2006 ASCE Panel to Advise Virginia's Governor And Secretary of Transportation on Rail Tunnel for Northern Virginia
Following article was published in ASCE News
The independent review panel that Pierce R. Homer, Virginia's secretary of transportation, asked ASCE to select and head last month on behalf of Governor Tim Kaine has been working diligently to assess the vast array of issues associated with determining the likely cost of construction a 6.4 km tunnel through a highly developed area in northern Virginia known as Tysons corner. Replete with office complexes and retail establishments, the area may also see a significant amount of residential construction. The tunnel would form part of a 37 km project to extend the commuter rail service ("Metro") operated by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority westward from Vienna to Washington Dulles International Airport. The panel, which is chaired by Robert S. O'Neil, P.E., F.ASCE, and comprises experts from a variety of disciplines, will examine such issues as life-cycle costs; rights-of-way; noise and vibration; utility aspects; the effect on roadways and traffic; and the acquisition of permits.
"The panel's task over the next two months is to look at all of the data available on the different designs and different approaches to constructing a tunnel," explains Michael Goode, P.E., M.ASCE, who as director of grants and contracts for ASCE has been supporting the panel's effort. "The panel will not only evaluate first costs but also the life-cycle cost issues of these different alternatives as well as various risks and contingencies. It will also consider factors relating to the surface development objectives of Fairfax County."
One of the panel's most pressing responsibilities involves analyzing the cost-effectiveness factors deriving from regulations promulgated by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). These regulations include standards based largely on how much travel time a project is expected to save riders per dollar spent. At stake is the $900 million - almost a quarter of the project's estimated $4 billion cost - that the federal government is expected to contribute if the project's overall cost conforms to the standards.
In recent months the Commonwealth of Virginia has worked with the FTA, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and local funding partners on various alignment and configurations for extending the rail line through Tysons Corner. The cost of this part of the extension is put at $2.1 billion - a figure that, according to some engineers, just barely meets the cost-effectiveness standards. "I don't know how a tunnel works within the formula." Roger Picard, the engineer leading the consortium of contractors hired for the project, told the Washington Post last Month. "Given the strict criteria, there's no way. The tunnel is a good solution if it's cost effective, but it's not."
While Metro officials in favor of the tunnel have said that a tunneling project would at most end up costing $200 million more than an elevated track, this additional amount is enough to jeopardize the federal cost-effectiveness rating related to the $900 million government contribution. "It's clear that the commonwealth and the governor would like to keep that funding." Goode adds. "The state doesn't want to have to find another source of funding - it's been a hard enough struggle finding a local match."
Although the locally preferred alternative that was advanced into preliminary engineering was an alignment through Tysons Corner that included a short tunnel bur for the most part was elevated. Fairfax County - a major funding partner - has asked the state to examine the cost of constructing the section of the alignment through Tysons Corner wholly underground. "Fair County is obviously an important constituency," notes Goode, "and its objection to an aerial structure seems partly related to a vision of transforming Tysons into a more pedestrian friendly, urban like region, which if feels would be better advanced with a tunnel." According to several Fairfax County leaders and many landowners in the Tysons Corner area, an underground route would also be considerably less disruptive for motorists during construction.
The review panel, which began its work in mid-May, will have 60 days in which to evaluate the proposals before it presents a summary on the tunnel alternative to Kaine and Homer. "We are pleased to announce this independent effort," said Homer in a press release on May 15. "It is critical that all the project partners have the best possible information to make this very important decision for the future of the region.
The Commonwealth of Virginia, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the FTA, and other stakeholders will carefully examine the panel's methods of review and serve as a resource for additional data and information that the panel may need to provide its assessment. "Although they're observers, they're also holders of a vast amount of data on the history of the construction and the operation of tunnels and aerial structures and other important components that the panel will be dealing with," Good explains. "So not only will they be expecting the panel to address their concerns; they will also be aware of the quality of the data that they use to make certain conclusions."
The state's willingness to engage the panel and delay a final decision on the expansion project not only underscores the intensity of the debate surrounding the tunneling alternative but also accentuates the likely significance that the findings of the panel will have in the governor's final decision. "As a leading professional engineering organization with a strong commitment to protecting public health, safety, and welfare, ASCE is well qualified to provide this support to the Commonwealth of Virginia," Patrick J. Natale, P.E., F.ASCE, the Society's executive director, said recently. "We are honored to have been asked to play a leading role in this effort."
Mark Fitzgerald
The independent review panel that Pierce R. Homer, Virginia's secretary of transportation, asked ASCE to select and head last month on behalf of Governor Tim Kaine has been working diligently to assess the vast array of issues associated with determining the likely cost of construction a 6.4 km tunnel through a highly developed area in northern Virginia known as Tysons corner. Replete with office complexes and retail establishments, the area may also see a significant amount of residential construction. The tunnel would form part of a 37 km project to extend the commuter rail service ("Metro") operated by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority westward from Vienna to Washington Dulles International Airport. The panel, which is chaired by Robert S. O'Neil, P.E., F.ASCE, and comprises experts from a variety of disciplines, will examine such issues as life-cycle costs; rights-of-way; noise and vibration; utility aspects; the effect on roadways and traffic; and the acquisition of permits.
"The panel's task over the next two months is to look at all of the data available on the different designs and different approaches to constructing a tunnel," explains Michael Goode, P.E., M.ASCE, who as director of grants and contracts for ASCE has been supporting the panel's effort. "The panel will not only evaluate first costs but also the life-cycle cost issues of these different alternatives as well as various risks and contingencies. It will also consider factors relating to the surface development objectives of Fairfax County."
One of the panel's most pressing responsibilities involves analyzing the cost-effectiveness factors deriving from regulations promulgated by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). These regulations include standards based largely on how much travel time a project is expected to save riders per dollar spent. At stake is the $900 million - almost a quarter of the project's estimated $4 billion cost - that the federal government is expected to contribute if the project's overall cost conforms to the standards.
In recent months the Commonwealth of Virginia has worked with the FTA, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and local funding partners on various alignment and configurations for extending the rail line through Tysons Corner. The cost of this part of the extension is put at $2.1 billion - a figure that, according to some engineers, just barely meets the cost-effectiveness standards. "I don't know how a tunnel works within the formula." Roger Picard, the engineer leading the consortium of contractors hired for the project, told the Washington Post last Month. "Given the strict criteria, there's no way. The tunnel is a good solution if it's cost effective, but it's not."
While Metro officials in favor of the tunnel have said that a tunneling project would at most end up costing $200 million more than an elevated track, this additional amount is enough to jeopardize the federal cost-effectiveness rating related to the $900 million government contribution. "It's clear that the commonwealth and the governor would like to keep that funding." Goode adds. "The state doesn't want to have to find another source of funding - it's been a hard enough struggle finding a local match."
Although the locally preferred alternative that was advanced into preliminary engineering was an alignment through Tysons Corner that included a short tunnel bur for the most part was elevated. Fairfax County - a major funding partner - has asked the state to examine the cost of constructing the section of the alignment through Tysons Corner wholly underground. "Fair County is obviously an important constituency," notes Goode, "and its objection to an aerial structure seems partly related to a vision of transforming Tysons into a more pedestrian friendly, urban like region, which if feels would be better advanced with a tunnel." According to several Fairfax County leaders and many landowners in the Tysons Corner area, an underground route would also be considerably less disruptive for motorists during construction.
The review panel, which began its work in mid-May, will have 60 days in which to evaluate the proposals before it presents a summary on the tunnel alternative to Kaine and Homer. "We are pleased to announce this independent effort," said Homer in a press release on May 15. "It is critical that all the project partners have the best possible information to make this very important decision for the future of the region.
The Commonwealth of Virginia, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the FTA, and other stakeholders will carefully examine the panel's methods of review and serve as a resource for additional data and information that the panel may need to provide its assessment. "Although they're observers, they're also holders of a vast amount of data on the history of the construction and the operation of tunnels and aerial structures and other important components that the panel will be dealing with," Good explains. "So not only will they be expecting the panel to address their concerns; they will also be aware of the quality of the data that they use to make certain conclusions."
The state's willingness to engage the panel and delay a final decision on the expansion project not only underscores the intensity of the debate surrounding the tunneling alternative but also accentuates the likely significance that the findings of the panel will have in the governor's final decision. "As a leading professional engineering organization with a strong commitment to protecting public health, safety, and welfare, ASCE is well qualified to provide this support to the Commonwealth of Virginia," Patrick J. Natale, P.E., F.ASCE, the Society's executive director, said recently. "We are honored to have been asked to play a leading role in this effort."
Mark Fitzgerald
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
March 13, 2007 'Binding' carbon targets proposed (United Kingdom)
Article can be found at BBC.
Britain could become the first country to set legally binding carbon reduction targets under plans unveiled by Environment Secretary David Miliband.
The draft Climate Change Bill calls for an independent panel to set ministers a "carbon budget" every five years, in a bid to cut emissions by 60% by 2050. If they miss the figure, future governments could be taken to court.
The Tories and Lib Dems welcomed the proposals, but said carbon budgets should be set annually. Mr Miliband has said annual targets would be too rigid to make allowances for climate variations. He hailed the draft bill as "the first of its kind in any country", and said Britain was "leading by example".
'Rolling targets'
The draft legislation will go to public and parliamentary consultation before becoming law next year, but environmental campaigners want to raise the 2050 target to 80% and set annual 3% cut targets to ensure compliance.
Shadow environment secretary Peter Ainsworth said the proposals were a "welcome step forward," although he said some "key elements" were missing at present. "We would like to see a system of rolling annual rate of change targets - rather than targets set for five year periods - to ensure that the UK remains on track towards a low carbon economy and to ensure true accountability.
"There is a danger that the five-year approach will enable responsibility for failure to be shunted on from one government to another."
Solar power
The carbon reduction targets will be based on advice by an independent committee. If future governments fail to achieve the targets, they could be taken to court, with a judicial review deciding what punishment - if any - to hand out.
The draft bill does not stipulate how the cuts should be made, or give specific reduction targets for individual businesses, councils and households. Mr Miliband said there were "big decisions" to be made on issues such as using nuclear power. He added: "In the end I don't care where the carbon reduction comes from. It's about the public interest and the market finding it."
The government plans include:
# Targets to reduce carbon emissions by 60% by 2050, from 1990 levels, and between 26% and 32% by 2020
# Greater energy efficiency, with more consumers becoming "producers" of their own energy at home
# Investment in low-carbon fuels and technologies, such as carbon capture and storage, wind, wave and solar power
# Carbon "budgets" - which cap emissions levels - set every five years
# The government reporting annually to Parliament on its progress in controlling emissions
Under the proposals, an independent body would advise on the setting of carbon budgets. Future policies to control emissions would also be made "quicker and easier" to introduce. A full Climate Change Bill is set to be published in the autumn.
At the weekend, the Conservatives unveiled environmental proposals including VAT or fuel duty on domestic flights. But Mr Miliband said more focus was needed on cutting carbon emissions from homes, citing government plans to make all new houses carbon-neutral by 2016 and encourage the use of energy-efficient light bulbs.
Chancellor Gordon Brown said the bill would mean governments would "manage our carbon budgets with the same prudence and discipline" as economic budgets. But opposition MPs are reported to be planning to table amendments which would force the government to accept annual targets.
The Liberal Democrats broadly support the aims of the bill want closer monitoring of a government's green progress. The party's environment spokesman Chris Huhne said: "There is a possibility here that the government wouldn't be really be held to account for what it had do or had failed to do until after it had faced the electorate again and that's not a satisfactory situation."
Britain could become the first country to set legally binding carbon reduction targets under plans unveiled by Environment Secretary David Miliband.
The draft Climate Change Bill calls for an independent panel to set ministers a "carbon budget" every five years, in a bid to cut emissions by 60% by 2050. If they miss the figure, future governments could be taken to court.
The Tories and Lib Dems welcomed the proposals, but said carbon budgets should be set annually. Mr Miliband has said annual targets would be too rigid to make allowances for climate variations. He hailed the draft bill as "the first of its kind in any country", and said Britain was "leading by example".
'Rolling targets'
The draft legislation will go to public and parliamentary consultation before becoming law next year, but environmental campaigners want to raise the 2050 target to 80% and set annual 3% cut targets to ensure compliance.
Shadow environment secretary Peter Ainsworth said the proposals were a "welcome step forward," although he said some "key elements" were missing at present. "We would like to see a system of rolling annual rate of change targets - rather than targets set for five year periods - to ensure that the UK remains on track towards a low carbon economy and to ensure true accountability.
"There is a danger that the five-year approach will enable responsibility for failure to be shunted on from one government to another."
Solar power
The carbon reduction targets will be based on advice by an independent committee. If future governments fail to achieve the targets, they could be taken to court, with a judicial review deciding what punishment - if any - to hand out.
The draft bill does not stipulate how the cuts should be made, or give specific reduction targets for individual businesses, councils and households. Mr Miliband said there were "big decisions" to be made on issues such as using nuclear power. He added: "In the end I don't care where the carbon reduction comes from. It's about the public interest and the market finding it."
The government plans include:
# Targets to reduce carbon emissions by 60% by 2050, from 1990 levels, and between 26% and 32% by 2020
# Greater energy efficiency, with more consumers becoming "producers" of their own energy at home
# Investment in low-carbon fuels and technologies, such as carbon capture and storage, wind, wave and solar power
# Carbon "budgets" - which cap emissions levels - set every five years
# The government reporting annually to Parliament on its progress in controlling emissions
Under the proposals, an independent body would advise on the setting of carbon budgets. Future policies to control emissions would also be made "quicker and easier" to introduce. A full Climate Change Bill is set to be published in the autumn.
At the weekend, the Conservatives unveiled environmental proposals including VAT or fuel duty on domestic flights. But Mr Miliband said more focus was needed on cutting carbon emissions from homes, citing government plans to make all new houses carbon-neutral by 2016 and encourage the use of energy-efficient light bulbs.
Chancellor Gordon Brown said the bill would mean governments would "manage our carbon budgets with the same prudence and discipline" as economic budgets. But opposition MPs are reported to be planning to table amendments which would force the government to accept annual targets.
The Liberal Democrats broadly support the aims of the bill want closer monitoring of a government's green progress. The party's environment spokesman Chris Huhne said: "There is a possibility here that the government wouldn't be really be held to account for what it had do or had failed to do until after it had faced the electorate again and that's not a satisfactory situation."
May 7, 2004 What will they think of next? (Engineering Projects)
Article can be found at BBC.
By Nick Triggle
BBC News Online
Critics lampooned the suggestion that the UK and France could be linked by a tunnel under the sea, but a decade ago the goal was achieved and history made. So what grand plans are next?
The Channel Tunnel has been blighted by difficulties - a fire, slow rail connections, enormous debts and shareholder revolt. Yet despite this, the appetite for new, ever more ambitious feats of engineering is as strong as ever.
If engineers get their way the coming decades will see the completion of tunnels linking continents, offshore airports and the longest bridges the world has ever seen. Malaysia's 452m Petronas Twin Towers, the world's highest building, will quickly be overtaken by projects in Dubai, China and Taiwan. There is even talk of a space elevator - which will carry people from Earth to the stars without the need for cumbersome spaceships.
Cheap and fast
Those who doubt the abilities of engineers to make their fanciful projects a reality are quickly dismissed. The only problem, they argue, is finding the backers."If we were to become incredibly novel we could build islands off-shore for airports." Bob McKitterick
"There is nothing in this industry we cannot do, it is just a matter of cost," says Bob McKitterick of engineering consultancy Scott Wilson, and a former president of the Institution of Structural Engineers.
Transport and travel are among the areas set to see the greatest innovation - with the demand for cheap, fast and convenient ways to get around likely to provide much of the momentum needed to get projects started.
The planned expansion of Heathrow and other airports is seen as essential to the UK's future economic prosperity - yet the plans are deeply unpopular with local residents and environmentalists. Engineers believe they may have the solution. "If we were to become incredibly novel we could build islands off-shore for airports," says Mr McKitterick.
He suggests the terminals, which could be built by joining several oil rigs together and linked to the mainland by tunnels, would "reduce noise and avoid building in overcrowded areas".
'Fantasy projects'
There is enthusiasm for tunnels elsewhere, with plenty of ambitious proposals being put forward - even if the finance is not yet in place.
FUTURE TUNNELS
Switzerland: Gotthard Base Tunnel, due to open in 2010 (35 miles)
Spain/Morocco: Tests on rail tunnel under Strait of Gibraltar
Spain and Morocco have agreed a programme of engineering tests for a rail tunnel under the Strait of Gibraltar. A decision on whether to go ahead is expected in four years.
Mike Chrimes, of the Institution of Civil Engineers, says there is also talk of a tunnel linking mainland Britain and Ireland. He says it would be on the sea bed, rather than underground, in a bid to save money. "Something like this is expensive, it would run into billions of pounds and be longer than the Channel Tunnel but Europe is keen on it," says Mr Chrimes. He adds: "These are fantasy projects that given the funding and political will could be achieved. Civil engineers would like to do them but they are not always a government priority."
'Great demand'
And then there are bridges. The one mile (1.6km) long Stonecutters Bridge, which is being built in Hong Kong over the next four years, is set to become the longest single-span, cable-stayed bridge.
"There is great demand for transport improvements and that is what a lot of the major civil engineering projects are about" Arup
A two mile (3.7km) bridge spanning the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Calabria in southern Italy has also been proposed, but questions still remain over where the £3bn funding is going to come from. If completed, it would be the longest suspension bridge in the world.
Talks have also been going on to link Sri Lanka and India across the Palk Strait by a bridge, replicating an ancient 19 mile (30km) land crossing which may or may not have been built by humans, but which is still visible from space.
"There is great demand for transport improvements and that is what a lot of the major civil engineering projects are about," says engineering firm Arup, which is involved in the Hong Kong scheme.
Civil engineers are also keen to see the completion of a 16,000 mile (25,800km) pan-American super highway, linking Alaska to the tip of South America. Much of the road is already in place but gaps remain in areas in Colombia and through the Andes.
Water supplies
Transport aside, many industry experts predict water-related projects may soon begin to dominate civil engineering.
"When there were water shortages a few summers ago there was talk of building a pipeline from the north of England to the south," says Ian Cross, director of studies at the department of civil engineering at the University of Portsmouth. "If there are shortages in the future this may be raised again."
He also believes there desalination plants used in the Middle East to convert sea water into drinking water could have to be built in northern climes.
'Mass transportation'
While these projects may be ambitious, they pale into insignificance when compared to the Nasa's plans for a space elevator.
A 25,000 mile (40,000km) cable would be tethered between a base station - probably in the ocean - and an orbiting satellite, which stays at the same point above the earth as it rotates on its axis. Satellites, payloads and people would be able to move up and down the cable cheaply and quickly.
"It has the potential to provide mass transportation to space in the same way highways, railroads, power lines, and pipelines provide mass transportation across the Earth's surface," says Nasa.
It is spending several millions of dollars researching the idea and while it admits the idea is still far from being a reality, it believes the system could be in place in the second half of the 21st Century. Unfortunately the fastest lift currently available would take over four months to reach its destination.
Perhaps that's something engineers could set their minds to in the meantime.
By Nick Triggle
BBC News Online
Critics lampooned the suggestion that the UK and France could be linked by a tunnel under the sea, but a decade ago the goal was achieved and history made. So what grand plans are next?
The Channel Tunnel has been blighted by difficulties - a fire, slow rail connections, enormous debts and shareholder revolt. Yet despite this, the appetite for new, ever more ambitious feats of engineering is as strong as ever.
If engineers get their way the coming decades will see the completion of tunnels linking continents, offshore airports and the longest bridges the world has ever seen. Malaysia's 452m Petronas Twin Towers, the world's highest building, will quickly be overtaken by projects in Dubai, China and Taiwan. There is even talk of a space elevator - which will carry people from Earth to the stars without the need for cumbersome spaceships.
Cheap and fast
Those who doubt the abilities of engineers to make their fanciful projects a reality are quickly dismissed. The only problem, they argue, is finding the backers."If we were to become incredibly novel we could build islands off-shore for airports." Bob McKitterick
"There is nothing in this industry we cannot do, it is just a matter of cost," says Bob McKitterick of engineering consultancy Scott Wilson, and a former president of the Institution of Structural Engineers.
Transport and travel are among the areas set to see the greatest innovation - with the demand for cheap, fast and convenient ways to get around likely to provide much of the momentum needed to get projects started.
The planned expansion of Heathrow and other airports is seen as essential to the UK's future economic prosperity - yet the plans are deeply unpopular with local residents and environmentalists. Engineers believe they may have the solution. "If we were to become incredibly novel we could build islands off-shore for airports," says Mr McKitterick.
He suggests the terminals, which could be built by joining several oil rigs together and linked to the mainland by tunnels, would "reduce noise and avoid building in overcrowded areas".
'Fantasy projects'
There is enthusiasm for tunnels elsewhere, with plenty of ambitious proposals being put forward - even if the finance is not yet in place.
FUTURE TUNNELS
Switzerland: Gotthard Base Tunnel, due to open in 2010 (35 miles)
Spain/Morocco: Tests on rail tunnel under Strait of Gibraltar
Spain and Morocco have agreed a programme of engineering tests for a rail tunnel under the Strait of Gibraltar. A decision on whether to go ahead is expected in four years.
Mike Chrimes, of the Institution of Civil Engineers, says there is also talk of a tunnel linking mainland Britain and Ireland. He says it would be on the sea bed, rather than underground, in a bid to save money. "Something like this is expensive, it would run into billions of pounds and be longer than the Channel Tunnel but Europe is keen on it," says Mr Chrimes. He adds: "These are fantasy projects that given the funding and political will could be achieved. Civil engineers would like to do them but they are not always a government priority."
'Great demand'
And then there are bridges. The one mile (1.6km) long Stonecutters Bridge, which is being built in Hong Kong over the next four years, is set to become the longest single-span, cable-stayed bridge.
"There is great demand for transport improvements and that is what a lot of the major civil engineering projects are about" Arup
A two mile (3.7km) bridge spanning the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Calabria in southern Italy has also been proposed, but questions still remain over where the £3bn funding is going to come from. If completed, it would be the longest suspension bridge in the world.
Talks have also been going on to link Sri Lanka and India across the Palk Strait by a bridge, replicating an ancient 19 mile (30km) land crossing which may or may not have been built by humans, but which is still visible from space.
"There is great demand for transport improvements and that is what a lot of the major civil engineering projects are about," says engineering firm Arup, which is involved in the Hong Kong scheme.
Civil engineers are also keen to see the completion of a 16,000 mile (25,800km) pan-American super highway, linking Alaska to the tip of South America. Much of the road is already in place but gaps remain in areas in Colombia and through the Andes.
Water supplies
Transport aside, many industry experts predict water-related projects may soon begin to dominate civil engineering.
"When there were water shortages a few summers ago there was talk of building a pipeline from the north of England to the south," says Ian Cross, director of studies at the department of civil engineering at the University of Portsmouth. "If there are shortages in the future this may be raised again."
He also believes there desalination plants used in the Middle East to convert sea water into drinking water could have to be built in northern climes.
'Mass transportation'
While these projects may be ambitious, they pale into insignificance when compared to the Nasa's plans for a space elevator.
A 25,000 mile (40,000km) cable would be tethered between a base station - probably in the ocean - and an orbiting satellite, which stays at the same point above the earth as it rotates on its axis. Satellites, payloads and people would be able to move up and down the cable cheaply and quickly.
"It has the potential to provide mass transportation to space in the same way highways, railroads, power lines, and pipelines provide mass transportation across the Earth's surface," says Nasa.
It is spending several millions of dollars researching the idea and while it admits the idea is still far from being a reality, it believes the system could be in place in the second half of the 21st Century. Unfortunately the fastest lift currently available would take over four months to reach its destination.
Perhaps that's something engineers could set their minds to in the meantime.
March 13, 2007 Africa and Europe set for tunnel link
Tangier port: Spain and Morocco have traditionally been linked by ferryArticle from the BBC
By Richard Hamilton
BBC News, Tangiers, Morocco
Plans to link Europe to Africa via a tunnel are gathering pace. The Moroccan government has been holding talks with its Spanish counterparts to start the project, which would consist of a railway beneath the Strait of Gibraltar carrying freight, passengers and cars. Work is expected to start in 2008.
The ferry between Tangiers in Morocco and southern Spain is the traditional way people have travelled from Africa to Europe. But that could change if a tunnel is built between the two continents. If that is the case, Africa and Europe, which split apart millions of years ago, could soon be joined together again permanently via a tunnel.
The man entrusted with designing the tunnel is the veteran Swiss engineer Giovanni Lombardi.He has already been involved with many great projects, including the Gothard Pass tunnel and the Mont Blanc tunnel in Switzerland. But he says this one may be his toughest assignment yet. "No works in the world compare to this one," he said. "There are a lot of challenges. First of all the sea at this point is 300m (1,000ft) deep - about five to six times deeper than the Channel Tunnel [linking the UK and France].
Graphic: Tunnel depth profile"Then there is the geological conditions. There are quite a lot of tectonic movements betweens the African and the European plates. So there would be quite a lot of movements in the earth, of stresses and so on."
On a cliff top outside Tangiers stands a rusty frame with cables and weights. It may not look very much but this is the start of a shaft that descends 300m below sea level, and this is where scientists and engineers are examining the sea bed to see how difficult it will be to drill into the rock. The team is lead by engineer Jillali Chafik from the Moroccan research team SNED. "At the moment we are carrying out the last studies into the sea bed which hold the key for the railway tunnel," he said. "These studies should be finished by the end of 2007. We are looking at how the tunnel will actually work and the amount of traffic that will use the tunnel, once it starts."
Political will
The blueprint for the tunnel envisages two tubes for train lines beneath the Strait of Gibraltar, with an emergency or service tunnel in between them.
An exploratory tunnel under the Mediterranean: The tunnel would run deep beneath the MediterraneanLike the Eurotunnel project, the trains would carry passengers as well as cars.
It has been talked about since the early 1980s, but the Moroccans say this time there is the political will. They are now in the final stages of the feasibility study which will be completed by the end of the year, with construction starting soon after. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero recently visited Morocco and said that Spain was fully committed to the project.
Graphic: tunnel cross-section"It will be a great symbol of our times," he said. "It will change the face of Europe and Africa. With support from members of the European Union, we can build this historic connection between the two continents."
Morocco's minister for transport, Karim Ghellab, says there would be huge economic benefits for his country. "It's clearly desirable that Morocco and Africa are joined to Europe by a fixed link," he told me. "It would ease communications between the two, and allow passengers and goods to move easily between the two continents. It's an historic project which the world needs today and it will go ahead," he said.
Bankruptcy fears
That is the official line, but ordinary Moroccans remain sceptical. The fortunes of the Channel Tunnel were followed closely here, and people have read the bad press about massive cost overruns, and desperate attempts by immigrants to cross into the UK from France.
A group of students pointed out some of the downsides of a tunnel. "I wonder if the problem of illegal immigration will be solved or not. By the time the tunnel is built young people will see the tunnel as a chance to run away," one said. "It will take a lot of money away from Morocco where we have so many problems - like poverty and unemployment," said another.
"You can see what happened to the tunnel between England and France and the company almost went bankrupt so you can imagine what would happen to Moroccan companies if they participated in such a project".
But scientists and politicians on both sides of the Mediterranean now seem convinced that the design will become a reality. The big question is where the money will come from. Estimates of cost vary between $8bn and $13bn (£4.1bn - £6.7bn).
It is hoped that funding can be raised via two publicly owned companies in Spain and Morocco, as well as financial support from the European Union. If the money is forthcoming, the very first fixed link between Europe and Africa could become one of the modern wonders of the world.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
February 11, 2003 Boston Big Dig Part Three - Lobbying translates into clout
PART THREE
Lobbying translates into clout
By Raphael Lewis and Sean P. Murphy, Globe Staff, 2/11/2003
Then inspectors found cancer-causing asbestos dust swirling around a Big Dig work site in 1996, the project's private-sector manager faced a possible trial and millions of dollars in fines for flouting clean air laws.
But the company, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, turned to the people who had always helped it. They were Bechtel's supervisors, the same state transportation officials assigned to make sure the company was doing its job.
The transportation officials played down Bechtel's failure to track asbestos dumping, and even joined the company in complaining that state environmental inspectors were too aggressive in their oversight, project records show. Finally, in 1998, the transportation officials hired a lawyer to broker an unusual settlement quietly. Bechtel emerged with its reputation intact and paid just $131,000. But taxpayers paid more than $3 million to clean up the asbestos mess.
The asbestos case is but one example of how Bechtel has not only engineered the Big Dig, but has built a fortress around company profits with the help of its state overseers, often at the public's expense.
With a cadre of lobbyists and lawyers on Beacon Hill and Capitol Hill, Bechtel has cemented bonds with policymakers to protect its profits, renew its contracts, and deflect questions about the quality of its management.
A yearlong Globe investigation that scrutinized a decade's worth of campaign contributions, contracts, and other records found that Bechtel, politicians, and state administrators closed ranks on many occasions to block scrutiny of the Big Dig by outsiders and internal critics alike.
Among the Globe's findings:
Confidential project documents from 1995 reveal that Bechtel willingly hid costs to present a more favorable view of the Big Dig's financial picture at the behest of top state officials seeking a more publicly acceptable bottom line.
Bechtel, its subcontractors, and its lobbyists have pumped at least $225,000 into the campaign coffers of the Massachusetts congressional delegation and the state's top elected officeholders since Big Dig construction began. Some of those elected officials intervened at crucial junctures in ways that helped the company avoid scrutiny.
Bechtel has retained several well-connected lawyers and lobbyists who, at the same time, worked for some of the state's top elected officials, including two former state governors and various legislative leaders. Doing so gave Bechtel access to lawmakers and powerbrokers.
Bechtel's Big Dig project manager, C. Matthew Wiley, and Morris Levy, Parsons Brinckerhoff's senior vice president, defended their companies' use of lobbyists and political contributions. It made the company "visible" in a complicated political environment far from the companies' headquarters, Levy said.
"We are not political, but we are not apolitical, either," said Levy, who has donated at least $10,000 to Massachusetts politicians in recent years. "It's to be visible, but not to influence."
But Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, a nonpartisan think tank, said Bechtel gives campaign contributions and hires lobbyists because it helps cement ties with lawmakers, quickly solves problems, and protects the company's profit base.
"Companies like Bechtel do this because it works," Noble said. "They are bottom-line oriented. It pays to do this, to hire people, to contribute to campaigns. It makes good business sense."
State and Bechtel: Strange bedfellows
When state officials chose the team of Bechtel and Parsons Brinckerhoff to manage the Big Dig in December 1985, they cited the companies' innovative proposal, and their reputations as industry titans. Separately, the companies had built some of the world's signature projects. Bechtel had helped build the Hoover Dam, the Alaska oil pipeline, the English Channel Tunnel, and an entire city in Saudi Arabia. Parsons had a role in dozens of major American transportation projects, including the building of New York City's subway system. For the Big Dig, they formed a joint company with Bechtel in charge.
Frederick P. Salvucci, then the state transportation secretary, said he selected Bechtel primarily for its demonstrated ability to use a difficult tunneling method.
But Bechtel had more than technical expertise. It had stellar Republican credentials, a handy tool when trying to persuade President Ronald Reagan, a California Republican, to give liberal Massachusetts the nation's most expensive public works project.
Not only was San Francisco-based Bechtel a major GOP campaign contributor, but Reagan had plucked two of his Cabinet members, George P. Shultz and Caspar Weinberger, from Bechtel's boardroom. That connection continues today: Shultz's daughter, Margaret, works as Bechtel's Big Dig human resources manager.
Salvucci dismissed the notion that political considerations colored his decision to award Bechtel the Artery management job, which was worth hundreds of millions, at a minimum, to the company he selected. Still, Salvucci said he hoped the company would be an asset in appealing to the Reagan administration.
"We stuck to the procurement procedures, but I certainly hoped that the fact that they had Republican ties would help us," Salvucci said. "It would have been a tragedy if we picked them for that reason, but it wasn't."
Ultimately, in 1987, Reagan vetoed start-up funding for the Artery project. But the Massachusetts congressional delegation gathered the votes to override Reagan's veto.
Thereafter, Bechtel turned its political attention to Massachusetts.
Weld and Bechtel: A meeting of minds
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Memo hints at hiding costs
A confidential 1995 memo written by William H. Edwards, Bechtel's budget manager, said the state's top three Big Dig officials directed him to "sanitize" a report to hide the Big Dig's true cost.
Michael P. Lewis, now the state's Big Dig project director, was one of the officials Edwards named, along with then-project director Peter M. Zuk and transportation secretary James J. Kerasiotes. The photo was taken in December 2002.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just as construction began on the Big Dig in 1991, William F. Weld, a Republican with strong business support, became Massachusetts' governor, ushering in an era of GOP control of the corner office that continues today. The Weld victory also began an era of considerable access for Bechtel.
Weld did not return calls seeking comment for this series. But campaign reports show how much Bechtel meant to the former governor -- especially when he ran for reelection in 1994 and unsuccessfully for US Senate against Democrat John F. Kerry two years later.
Between 1991 and 1996, Weld reaped nearly $25,000 from Bechtel and Parsons executives, including several of the maximum $1,000 annual donations from George Shultz, who worked as a Bechtel consultant after his stint in the Reagan White House; Bechtel patriarch Stephen D. Bechtel Jr. and his wife, Elizabeth; Bechtel chief operating officer Adrian Zaccaria; and Levy of Parsons Brinckerhoff.
The support came as Weld and Bechtel each expended considerable energy drumming up support for California Governor Pete Wilson's failed bid for the 1996 GOP presidential nomination. That included more than $1.4 million raised by Weld's chief fund-raiser, Peter Berlandi.
For the first half of the 1990s, Berlandi worked simultaneously as Weld's fund-raiser and as Bechtel's "liaison" with the administration. But his dual role became a major campaign issue in 1994, as Weld's opponents accused Berlandi of shaking down Big Dig contractors for campaign contributions, a claim that was never substantiated. Still, Berlandi severed his Bechtel contract after Weld's re-election, which freed him up to work for Wilson.
Berlandi, in an interview, said that he never discussed Bechtel with Weld, and that his work for the Wilson campaign had nothing to do with California-based Bechtel Corp.
But he acknowledged speaking to Weld when, in September 1994, just two months before that year's gubernatorial election, a rift developed between James J. Kerasiotes, the state's top Big Dig official, and Theodore G. "Tad" Weigle Jr., Bechtel's project manager.
At a business-leader breakfast, Kerasiotes promised the project would cost no more than $7.7 billion. But when a Globe reporter asked Weigle, he refused to guarantee that number. Kerasiotes was outraged with the contradiction, and now acknowledges that he demanded that Bechtel remove Weigle from the Big Dig. Weld backed Kerasiotes in seeking to remove Weigle, Kerasiotes said.
Berlandi helped arrange a meeting between Weld and Gary Bechtel, then Bechtel's president. Bechtel and another senior executive flew to Boston on Dec. 1, 1994, and held two meetings with Weld at the Boston Harbor Hotel, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon.
Only Weld and Gary Bechtel took part in the morning meeting, Kerasiotes said. Kerasiotes described the get-together as a "courtesy" to Gary Bechtel.
Weld told Kerasiotes afterward that he and Bechtel did not spend much time talking about the Big Dig in their private meeting, Kerasiotes said. Instead, they discussed the Wilson campaign.
A Wilson victory would have certainly helped both Weld and Bechtel. For Weld, who made no secret of his ambitions for higher office, a Wilson presidency could have meant a high-level appointment, the customary reward for such ardent and early campaign support. And for Bechtel, a Wilson win would have put in the White House another president with a close relationship with the company.
At the afternoon meeting, Weld and Bechtel discussed the Weigle matter and the project's ballooning cost, according to two people who were familiar with the discussions. A month after the meeting, Bechtel removed Weigle, and Weld flew to San Francisco to raise more than $300,000 for Wilson's campaign.
Later, when Weld ran for the Senate, his San Francisco connections paid handsome dividends, as contributions from the Bay Area topped $400,000. Among those were Bechtel's top executives and their spouses.
Alan Altshuler, a professor of urban policy at Harvard University and author of a forthcoming book on the Big Dig, said the episode demonstrates how Bechtel manages its political relationships in order to bank support for possible future disputes.
"This was a case where [Bechtel executives] were obviously being very responsive to the politics in Massachusetts," Altshuler said, adding that he views Bechtel's use of political contributions and lobbyists to be antithetical to the public interest.
"You would have wanted a legislative oversight committee or someone to say, 'Hey, that's wrong. These guys should not be active in Massachusetts politics. They are powerful enough,' " he said.
"Sanitized" numbers
Three months after Weld's meeting with Gary Bechtel, on March 15, 1995, a top Bechtel manager on the Big Dig wrote a memorandum marked "Confidential" and placed it in a file cabinet in the project's downtown headquarters. Bechtel's Big Dig budget manager, William H. Edwards, authored the memo, which told an explosive story.
It detailed a discussion Edwards had with top state officials on the Big Dig. The officials were scrambling to trim the Big Dig's reported costs only hours before a key meeting with federal regulators. Their goal, Edwards wrote, was to reduce the bottom line by $400 million.
Michael P. Lewis, then the deputy project director, "directed" Edwards to, in Lewis's words, "sanitize" the package he was preparing for the federal officials, some of whom were coming in from Washington for the meeting, the memo said. Edwards noted that Lewis was following the orders of his bosses, including then-project director Peter M. Zuk and transportation secretary Kerasiotes.
"Assemble a 'sanitized' review package that shows summary information only," Edwards wrote, quoting the orders he says he received from Lewis. "Most notable: Do not include the cost exclusion information."
Edwards went on to list in detail $332 million in Big Dig costs that he subtracted from the accounting breakdown that was going to be presented to the regulators. The reductions brought the project's overall price to $8.069 billion, close to the just-under-$8 billion figure Kerasiotes had said he wanted.
The memo, addressed to "File," was copied to three top Bechtel officials, and included minutes of the meeting with federal officials that followed. The minutes show that Kerasiotes, with Edwards seated beside him, told the Federal Highway Administration that the project's cost was $8.069 billion.
Left out from federal review were $135 million in known costs attributable to inflation; $82 million in costs associated with a legally binding agreement with the Metropolitan District Commission for park-building; and $115 million subtracted from estimates of construction cost increases.
According to the memo, on the following day, Zuk and Lewis returned to Edwards, requesting further cuts "to hit a cost value of $7.997" billion.
Kerasiotes said the efforts to cut costs were legitimate, regardless of how Bechtel portrayed them in internal memos. He said Bechtel was chafing because the cost cuts would mean less money for the company.
Zuk, who left the project in December 1998, said the term sanitize "may have been a poor choice of words" on the part of Lewis and himself, who meant it innocuously, as in to clean up, and not to conceal.
"The direction was to simplify the presentation made to [the federal government] because it was too complicated," said Zuk. He defended the subtractions as justified and proper, even if some of them would be added back into the project's cost in later years.
Edwards, who remains Bechtel's Big Dig budget chief, said he was advised by his attorney not to comment.
Lewis is now the Big Dig's project director, the highest state official on the Big Dig. He would not comment on the memo, but said through a spokeswoman that federal officials became aware of the Big Dig's accounting procedures within a few days of the meeting.
Yet federal officials disputed that notion on April 1, 2000, when a congressionally appointed task force assembled to probe the rising cost of the Big Dig concluded that project management "deliberately failed to inform" federal authorities "of the magnitude of the potential overrun."
The task force demanded written testimony from Bechtel officials explaining their role in "the decision to withhold material from" the Federal Highway Administration.
Bechtel's response revealed just how close the company and the state had grown. The company said in a certified letter that its responsibility was to give all pertinent financial information to the state. But the company had no such obligation to the federal government: It served only the state.
"All decisions on how to use this information, and whether or how to share it with [the Federal Highway Administration], rested exclusively with the MTA," wrote Bechtel's Wiley, referring to the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.
Payback time
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bechtel's contributions to candidates for national office
J. Joseph Moakley $5,500 Plus $22,500 from lobbists
James P. McGovern $4,800 Plus $9,450 from lobbists
Edward M. Kennedy $8,000 Plus $21,584 from lobbists
William F. Weld $11,250
John F. Kerry $4,800 Plus $17,500 from lobbists
Richard E. Neal $5,575 from lobbists
William D. Delahunt $10,918 from lobbists
To candidates for governor
William F. Weld $13,500
Paul Cellucci $19,970
Jane M. Swift $750
Mitt Romney $700
Shannon P. O'Brien $4,200
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just as Bechtel backed up the state in its financial presentations to the federal government, top state leaders assisted Bechtel when the company came under fire for its mistakes.
In the summer of 2001, the Big Dig's estimated cost soared by $300 million in just three weeks, prompting an angry outcry from the Turnpike Authority's board. Bechtel's errors, they said, were at the root of the budget problem, and the company owed the state a refund. If the company didn't oblige, they said, the authority could terminate its contract.
The Turnpike Authority's lawyers set up two sessions to negotiate a possible refund with Bechtel on Oct. 9, 2001, one to take place at 9 a.m., the other at 3 p.m. The lawyers were demanding tens of millions of dollars, enough to put off toll hikes needed to pay down Big Dig debts.
CORRECTION: Because of a reporting error, the third part of the Globe's series on problems with the Big Dig incorrectly stated that representatives of the project's managers, Bechtel/ Parsons Brinckerhoff, failed to appear at an Oct. 9, 2001, negotiating session with the Turnpike Authority regarding reimbursement for management mistakes. Company representatives did show up for a short bargaining session.
Top Bechtel executives flew in with a surprising offer: The company would give the state up to $50 million, according to two people who attended the first negotiating session.
Turnpike Authority lawyers said they left the morning meeting hopeful that at last Bechtel would pay for some of its mistakes. What they did not know was that Bechtel's newly hired lobbyist, Andrew Paven, had been busy working his connections with the state's political elite. Paven arranged for Bechtel executives to go directly from the first negotiating session into a meeting with Acting Governor Jane M. Swift's chief of staff and the secretary of administration and finance.
The afternoon bargaining session with the Turnpike lawyers never took place. After sitting down with Swift's two top aides, Bechtel rescinded its offer to refund to the state up to $50 million. The two aides declined comment.
A week later, when two of three Turnpike Authority board members voted to delay the toll hike, hoping they could instead rely on Bechtel's making a refund, Swift fired the duo, calling them "fiscally irresponsible." Swift, who declined comment for this article, told reporters at the time that the firings had nothing to do Bechtel. Indeed, the two board members, Christy Mihos and Jordan Levy, were challenging Swift on a range of policy matters. She believed they were irresponsible; they believed she was usurping power from the Turnpike Authority.
Levy and Mihos, however, were convinced their firing had to do with their tough stance against Bechtel, and they sued to get their jobs back. Bechtel brought in more firepower -- the company's new damage control expert, James P. "Jock" Covey. A veteran diplomat and Middle East expert, Covey put the word out that Bechtel wanted help.
By April 2002, Covey had found the hired hands he sought. For lobbying, he selected Massachusetts Bay Associates, a firm founded by former State Representative R. Emmet Hayes, husband of then-state Treasurer Shannon P. O'Brien, who was running for governor. Covey also recruited Cheryl Cronin, a politically connected lawyer and strategist whose clients include Swift and House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran. Cronin, who in December threw Swift's send-off party at her Back Bay home, counseled the acting governor during her earlier appearances before the State Ethics Commission over her use of aides to perform personal tasks.
While negotiating against the Turnpike Authority on behalf of Bechtel, Cronin was also representing the acting governor in a lawsuit brought by Christy Mihos, the fired Turnpike Authority board member. Cronin declined to comment.
Bechtel's new team of lobbyists, strategists, and consultants pumped more than $14,000 into campaign funds of members of the state legislature in the months that followed their hiring, the Globe found. Among leading politicians, Swift, who had already dropped out of the governor's race, got nothing. O'Brien and running mate Chris Gabrieli reaped more than $4,000. Finneran did not get any contributions from Bechtel's backers in that period, records show, but has received more than $2,000 from Bechtel's lobbyists and subcontractors since 1995.
"There's times when you think you're getting a raw deal," said Bechtel's Wiley, explaining the contributions. "You need to maintain those working relationships. It may not change the deal but it gives you a chance to make your case."
In May 2002, the state Supreme Judicial Court ruled that Swift was not justified in firing the two Turnpike Authority board members.
But the Bechtel critics returned to find their power was about to be diluted. Two months after the court ruling, the Legislature, in a late-night vote, expanded the three-member Turnpike Authority board to five, giving Swift two new appointees and making Bechtel's critics a minority.
Former State Representative Joseph Sullivan, as cochairman of the Legislature's Transportation Committee, wrote the bill. Sullivan said he moved to expand the Turnpike Authority board to provide greater community input into the Big Dig, and not to help Bechtel.
A few months earlier, Sullivan had considered a run for lieutenant governor. Among the advisers he sought out was Paven, Bechtel's top lobbyist in Boston.
Sullivan sought Paven's counsel on at least three occasions to discuss a potential run, even relying on Paven to recruit pollsters and other strategists, interviews with those involved revealed.
"Andy [Paven] introduced me to him," said pollster Irwin "Tubby" Harrison, who met with Sullivan and Paven at the Federalist restaurant in the shadow of the State House in December 2001 -- a month when Paven donated the maximum $200 to Sullivan's campaign.
"Other than talking about the possibility of his running for lieutenant governor, I don't recall much," Harrison said.
Paven would not comment on any meetings with Sullivan about a race for lieutenant governor. But he did acknowledge speaking to Sullivan from "time to time" to argue Bechtel's side of the negotiations with the Turnpike Authority.
Sullivan, a Braintree Democrat who left the Legislature last month to head the state Lottery Commission, said he had known Paven, a Quincy native, for many years. He consulted Paven as a friend, Sullivan said.
State Senator Robert A. Havern, cochairman of the Transportation Committee with Sullivan, said it was clear that expanding the board would help Bechtel. Havern said he and his Senate colleagues had actually wanted to keep the board intact and to "let the negotiations play out" between Bechtel and the Turnpike Authority. But Havern said he changed his mind out of deference to Sullivan.
Swift filled the two newly created seats on the Turnpike Authority board with developer and longtime GOP contributor Richard K. Anderson and veteran lawyer John "Jack" Moscardelli.
Moscardelli is a close friend and jogging partner of Peter Berlandi, Bechtel's chief State House strategist for half a decade. Moscardelli said he has no ties with Bechtel.
Since Swift appointed the new board members, negotiations aimed at getting money back from Bechtel have stalled.
At the talks, Cronin argues on behalf of Bechtel and the Turnpike relies on Leonard L. Lewin, the former chief counsel to the Cellucci and Swift administrations. Lewin, who would not comment, is no stranger to Cronin. In fact, he worked side-by-side with Cronin during his stint as chief counsel in Swift's appearances before the state's Ethics Commission.
Lewin and Cronin have not had much negotiating to do, however. Turnpike lawyers say Bechtel officials rarely agree to meet for talks, and when they do, they send Cronin and lower-level employees with no decision-making power.
If negotiations ultimately fail, as officials on both sides have predicted, the state would face a fork in the road: Sue Bechtel, or drop the pursuit of reimbursement entirely.
The one means foreiting a decade's worth of overruns. The other route would mean a long, costly legal battle.
Either way, Bechtel's Boston lobbyists would be well positioned to push the company's cause with policymakers. After all, the lobbying firm, O'Neill and Associates, signed a contract in December with the Executive Office of Transportation and Construction, the same state agency that pays Bechtel for its work on the Big Dig.
Globe correspondent Joseph Spurr contributed to this report. Raphael Lewis can be reached by e-mail at rlewis@globe.com. Sean P. Murphy can be reached at smurph@globe.com.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 2/11/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
Lobbying translates into clout
By Raphael Lewis and Sean P. Murphy, Globe Staff, 2/11/2003
Then inspectors found cancer-causing asbestos dust swirling around a Big Dig work site in 1996, the project's private-sector manager faced a possible trial and millions of dollars in fines for flouting clean air laws.
But the company, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, turned to the people who had always helped it. They were Bechtel's supervisors, the same state transportation officials assigned to make sure the company was doing its job.
The transportation officials played down Bechtel's failure to track asbestos dumping, and even joined the company in complaining that state environmental inspectors were too aggressive in their oversight, project records show. Finally, in 1998, the transportation officials hired a lawyer to broker an unusual settlement quietly. Bechtel emerged with its reputation intact and paid just $131,000. But taxpayers paid more than $3 million to clean up the asbestos mess.
The asbestos case is but one example of how Bechtel has not only engineered the Big Dig, but has built a fortress around company profits with the help of its state overseers, often at the public's expense.
With a cadre of lobbyists and lawyers on Beacon Hill and Capitol Hill, Bechtel has cemented bonds with policymakers to protect its profits, renew its contracts, and deflect questions about the quality of its management.
A yearlong Globe investigation that scrutinized a decade's worth of campaign contributions, contracts, and other records found that Bechtel, politicians, and state administrators closed ranks on many occasions to block scrutiny of the Big Dig by outsiders and internal critics alike.
Among the Globe's findings:
Confidential project documents from 1995 reveal that Bechtel willingly hid costs to present a more favorable view of the Big Dig's financial picture at the behest of top state officials seeking a more publicly acceptable bottom line.
Bechtel, its subcontractors, and its lobbyists have pumped at least $225,000 into the campaign coffers of the Massachusetts congressional delegation and the state's top elected officeholders since Big Dig construction began. Some of those elected officials intervened at crucial junctures in ways that helped the company avoid scrutiny.
Bechtel has retained several well-connected lawyers and lobbyists who, at the same time, worked for some of the state's top elected officials, including two former state governors and various legislative leaders. Doing so gave Bechtel access to lawmakers and powerbrokers.
Bechtel's Big Dig project manager, C. Matthew Wiley, and Morris Levy, Parsons Brinckerhoff's senior vice president, defended their companies' use of lobbyists and political contributions. It made the company "visible" in a complicated political environment far from the companies' headquarters, Levy said.
"We are not political, but we are not apolitical, either," said Levy, who has donated at least $10,000 to Massachusetts politicians in recent years. "It's to be visible, but not to influence."
But Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, a nonpartisan think tank, said Bechtel gives campaign contributions and hires lobbyists because it helps cement ties with lawmakers, quickly solves problems, and protects the company's profit base.
"Companies like Bechtel do this because it works," Noble said. "They are bottom-line oriented. It pays to do this, to hire people, to contribute to campaigns. It makes good business sense."
State and Bechtel: Strange bedfellows
When state officials chose the team of Bechtel and Parsons Brinckerhoff to manage the Big Dig in December 1985, they cited the companies' innovative proposal, and their reputations as industry titans. Separately, the companies had built some of the world's signature projects. Bechtel had helped build the Hoover Dam, the Alaska oil pipeline, the English Channel Tunnel, and an entire city in Saudi Arabia. Parsons had a role in dozens of major American transportation projects, including the building of New York City's subway system. For the Big Dig, they formed a joint company with Bechtel in charge.
Frederick P. Salvucci, then the state transportation secretary, said he selected Bechtel primarily for its demonstrated ability to use a difficult tunneling method.
But Bechtel had more than technical expertise. It had stellar Republican credentials, a handy tool when trying to persuade President Ronald Reagan, a California Republican, to give liberal Massachusetts the nation's most expensive public works project.
Not only was San Francisco-based Bechtel a major GOP campaign contributor, but Reagan had plucked two of his Cabinet members, George P. Shultz and Caspar Weinberger, from Bechtel's boardroom. That connection continues today: Shultz's daughter, Margaret, works as Bechtel's Big Dig human resources manager.
Salvucci dismissed the notion that political considerations colored his decision to award Bechtel the Artery management job, which was worth hundreds of millions, at a minimum, to the company he selected. Still, Salvucci said he hoped the company would be an asset in appealing to the Reagan administration.
"We stuck to the procurement procedures, but I certainly hoped that the fact that they had Republican ties would help us," Salvucci said. "It would have been a tragedy if we picked them for that reason, but it wasn't."
Ultimately, in 1987, Reagan vetoed start-up funding for the Artery project. But the Massachusetts congressional delegation gathered the votes to override Reagan's veto.
Thereafter, Bechtel turned its political attention to Massachusetts.
Weld and Bechtel: A meeting of minds
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Memo hints at hiding costs
A confidential 1995 memo written by William H. Edwards, Bechtel's budget manager, said the state's top three Big Dig officials directed him to "sanitize" a report to hide the Big Dig's true cost.
Michael P. Lewis, now the state's Big Dig project director, was one of the officials Edwards named, along with then-project director Peter M. Zuk and transportation secretary James J. Kerasiotes. The photo was taken in December 2002.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just as construction began on the Big Dig in 1991, William F. Weld, a Republican with strong business support, became Massachusetts' governor, ushering in an era of GOP control of the corner office that continues today. The Weld victory also began an era of considerable access for Bechtel.
Weld did not return calls seeking comment for this series. But campaign reports show how much Bechtel meant to the former governor -- especially when he ran for reelection in 1994 and unsuccessfully for US Senate against Democrat John F. Kerry two years later.
Between 1991 and 1996, Weld reaped nearly $25,000 from Bechtel and Parsons executives, including several of the maximum $1,000 annual donations from George Shultz, who worked as a Bechtel consultant after his stint in the Reagan White House; Bechtel patriarch Stephen D. Bechtel Jr. and his wife, Elizabeth; Bechtel chief operating officer Adrian Zaccaria; and Levy of Parsons Brinckerhoff.
The support came as Weld and Bechtel each expended considerable energy drumming up support for California Governor Pete Wilson's failed bid for the 1996 GOP presidential nomination. That included more than $1.4 million raised by Weld's chief fund-raiser, Peter Berlandi.
For the first half of the 1990s, Berlandi worked simultaneously as Weld's fund-raiser and as Bechtel's "liaison" with the administration. But his dual role became a major campaign issue in 1994, as Weld's opponents accused Berlandi of shaking down Big Dig contractors for campaign contributions, a claim that was never substantiated. Still, Berlandi severed his Bechtel contract after Weld's re-election, which freed him up to work for Wilson.
Berlandi, in an interview, said that he never discussed Bechtel with Weld, and that his work for the Wilson campaign had nothing to do with California-based Bechtel Corp.
But he acknowledged speaking to Weld when, in September 1994, just two months before that year's gubernatorial election, a rift developed between James J. Kerasiotes, the state's top Big Dig official, and Theodore G. "Tad" Weigle Jr., Bechtel's project manager.
At a business-leader breakfast, Kerasiotes promised the project would cost no more than $7.7 billion. But when a Globe reporter asked Weigle, he refused to guarantee that number. Kerasiotes was outraged with the contradiction, and now acknowledges that he demanded that Bechtel remove Weigle from the Big Dig. Weld backed Kerasiotes in seeking to remove Weigle, Kerasiotes said.
Berlandi helped arrange a meeting between Weld and Gary Bechtel, then Bechtel's president. Bechtel and another senior executive flew to Boston on Dec. 1, 1994, and held two meetings with Weld at the Boston Harbor Hotel, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon.
Only Weld and Gary Bechtel took part in the morning meeting, Kerasiotes said. Kerasiotes described the get-together as a "courtesy" to Gary Bechtel.
Weld told Kerasiotes afterward that he and Bechtel did not spend much time talking about the Big Dig in their private meeting, Kerasiotes said. Instead, they discussed the Wilson campaign.
A Wilson victory would have certainly helped both Weld and Bechtel. For Weld, who made no secret of his ambitions for higher office, a Wilson presidency could have meant a high-level appointment, the customary reward for such ardent and early campaign support. And for Bechtel, a Wilson win would have put in the White House another president with a close relationship with the company.
At the afternoon meeting, Weld and Bechtel discussed the Weigle matter and the project's ballooning cost, according to two people who were familiar with the discussions. A month after the meeting, Bechtel removed Weigle, and Weld flew to San Francisco to raise more than $300,000 for Wilson's campaign.
Later, when Weld ran for the Senate, his San Francisco connections paid handsome dividends, as contributions from the Bay Area topped $400,000. Among those were Bechtel's top executives and their spouses.
Alan Altshuler, a professor of urban policy at Harvard University and author of a forthcoming book on the Big Dig, said the episode demonstrates how Bechtel manages its political relationships in order to bank support for possible future disputes.
"This was a case where [Bechtel executives] were obviously being very responsive to the politics in Massachusetts," Altshuler said, adding that he views Bechtel's use of political contributions and lobbyists to be antithetical to the public interest.
"You would have wanted a legislative oversight committee or someone to say, 'Hey, that's wrong. These guys should not be active in Massachusetts politics. They are powerful enough,' " he said.
"Sanitized" numbers
Three months after Weld's meeting with Gary Bechtel, on March 15, 1995, a top Bechtel manager on the Big Dig wrote a memorandum marked "Confidential" and placed it in a file cabinet in the project's downtown headquarters. Bechtel's Big Dig budget manager, William H. Edwards, authored the memo, which told an explosive story.
It detailed a discussion Edwards had with top state officials on the Big Dig. The officials were scrambling to trim the Big Dig's reported costs only hours before a key meeting with federal regulators. Their goal, Edwards wrote, was to reduce the bottom line by $400 million.
Michael P. Lewis, then the deputy project director, "directed" Edwards to, in Lewis's words, "sanitize" the package he was preparing for the federal officials, some of whom were coming in from Washington for the meeting, the memo said. Edwards noted that Lewis was following the orders of his bosses, including then-project director Peter M. Zuk and transportation secretary Kerasiotes.
"Assemble a 'sanitized' review package that shows summary information only," Edwards wrote, quoting the orders he says he received from Lewis. "Most notable: Do not include the cost exclusion information."
Edwards went on to list in detail $332 million in Big Dig costs that he subtracted from the accounting breakdown that was going to be presented to the regulators. The reductions brought the project's overall price to $8.069 billion, close to the just-under-$8 billion figure Kerasiotes had said he wanted.
The memo, addressed to "File," was copied to three top Bechtel officials, and included minutes of the meeting with federal officials that followed. The minutes show that Kerasiotes, with Edwards seated beside him, told the Federal Highway Administration that the project's cost was $8.069 billion.
Left out from federal review were $135 million in known costs attributable to inflation; $82 million in costs associated with a legally binding agreement with the Metropolitan District Commission for park-building; and $115 million subtracted from estimates of construction cost increases.
According to the memo, on the following day, Zuk and Lewis returned to Edwards, requesting further cuts "to hit a cost value of $7.997" billion.
Kerasiotes said the efforts to cut costs were legitimate, regardless of how Bechtel portrayed them in internal memos. He said Bechtel was chafing because the cost cuts would mean less money for the company.
Zuk, who left the project in December 1998, said the term sanitize "may have been a poor choice of words" on the part of Lewis and himself, who meant it innocuously, as in to clean up, and not to conceal.
"The direction was to simplify the presentation made to [the federal government] because it was too complicated," said Zuk. He defended the subtractions as justified and proper, even if some of them would be added back into the project's cost in later years.
Edwards, who remains Bechtel's Big Dig budget chief, said he was advised by his attorney not to comment.
Lewis is now the Big Dig's project director, the highest state official on the Big Dig. He would not comment on the memo, but said through a spokeswoman that federal officials became aware of the Big Dig's accounting procedures within a few days of the meeting.
Yet federal officials disputed that notion on April 1, 2000, when a congressionally appointed task force assembled to probe the rising cost of the Big Dig concluded that project management "deliberately failed to inform" federal authorities "of the magnitude of the potential overrun."
The task force demanded written testimony from Bechtel officials explaining their role in "the decision to withhold material from" the Federal Highway Administration.
Bechtel's response revealed just how close the company and the state had grown. The company said in a certified letter that its responsibility was to give all pertinent financial information to the state. But the company had no such obligation to the federal government: It served only the state.
"All decisions on how to use this information, and whether or how to share it with [the Federal Highway Administration], rested exclusively with the MTA," wrote Bechtel's Wiley, referring to the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.
Payback time
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bechtel's contributions to candidates for national office
J. Joseph Moakley $5,500 Plus $22,500 from lobbists
James P. McGovern $4,800 Plus $9,450 from lobbists
Edward M. Kennedy $8,000 Plus $21,584 from lobbists
William F. Weld $11,250
John F. Kerry $4,800 Plus $17,500 from lobbists
Richard E. Neal $5,575 from lobbists
William D. Delahunt $10,918 from lobbists
To candidates for governor
William F. Weld $13,500
Paul Cellucci $19,970
Jane M. Swift $750
Mitt Romney $700
Shannon P. O'Brien $4,200
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just as Bechtel backed up the state in its financial presentations to the federal government, top state leaders assisted Bechtel when the company came under fire for its mistakes.
In the summer of 2001, the Big Dig's estimated cost soared by $300 million in just three weeks, prompting an angry outcry from the Turnpike Authority's board. Bechtel's errors, they said, were at the root of the budget problem, and the company owed the state a refund. If the company didn't oblige, they said, the authority could terminate its contract.
The Turnpike Authority's lawyers set up two sessions to negotiate a possible refund with Bechtel on Oct. 9, 2001, one to take place at 9 a.m., the other at 3 p.m. The lawyers were demanding tens of millions of dollars, enough to put off toll hikes needed to pay down Big Dig debts.
CORRECTION: Because of a reporting error, the third part of the Globe's series on problems with the Big Dig incorrectly stated that representatives of the project's managers, Bechtel/ Parsons Brinckerhoff, failed to appear at an Oct. 9, 2001, negotiating session with the Turnpike Authority regarding reimbursement for management mistakes. Company representatives did show up for a short bargaining session.
Top Bechtel executives flew in with a surprising offer: The company would give the state up to $50 million, according to two people who attended the first negotiating session.
Turnpike Authority lawyers said they left the morning meeting hopeful that at last Bechtel would pay for some of its mistakes. What they did not know was that Bechtel's newly hired lobbyist, Andrew Paven, had been busy working his connections with the state's political elite. Paven arranged for Bechtel executives to go directly from the first negotiating session into a meeting with Acting Governor Jane M. Swift's chief of staff and the secretary of administration and finance.
The afternoon bargaining session with the Turnpike lawyers never took place. After sitting down with Swift's two top aides, Bechtel rescinded its offer to refund to the state up to $50 million. The two aides declined comment.
A week later, when two of three Turnpike Authority board members voted to delay the toll hike, hoping they could instead rely on Bechtel's making a refund, Swift fired the duo, calling them "fiscally irresponsible." Swift, who declined comment for this article, told reporters at the time that the firings had nothing to do Bechtel. Indeed, the two board members, Christy Mihos and Jordan Levy, were challenging Swift on a range of policy matters. She believed they were irresponsible; they believed she was usurping power from the Turnpike Authority.
Levy and Mihos, however, were convinced their firing had to do with their tough stance against Bechtel, and they sued to get their jobs back. Bechtel brought in more firepower -- the company's new damage control expert, James P. "Jock" Covey. A veteran diplomat and Middle East expert, Covey put the word out that Bechtel wanted help.
By April 2002, Covey had found the hired hands he sought. For lobbying, he selected Massachusetts Bay Associates, a firm founded by former State Representative R. Emmet Hayes, husband of then-state Treasurer Shannon P. O'Brien, who was running for governor. Covey also recruited Cheryl Cronin, a politically connected lawyer and strategist whose clients include Swift and House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran. Cronin, who in December threw Swift's send-off party at her Back Bay home, counseled the acting governor during her earlier appearances before the State Ethics Commission over her use of aides to perform personal tasks.
While negotiating against the Turnpike Authority on behalf of Bechtel, Cronin was also representing the acting governor in a lawsuit brought by Christy Mihos, the fired Turnpike Authority board member. Cronin declined to comment.
Bechtel's new team of lobbyists, strategists, and consultants pumped more than $14,000 into campaign funds of members of the state legislature in the months that followed their hiring, the Globe found. Among leading politicians, Swift, who had already dropped out of the governor's race, got nothing. O'Brien and running mate Chris Gabrieli reaped more than $4,000. Finneran did not get any contributions from Bechtel's backers in that period, records show, but has received more than $2,000 from Bechtel's lobbyists and subcontractors since 1995.
"There's times when you think you're getting a raw deal," said Bechtel's Wiley, explaining the contributions. "You need to maintain those working relationships. It may not change the deal but it gives you a chance to make your case."
In May 2002, the state Supreme Judicial Court ruled that Swift was not justified in firing the two Turnpike Authority board members.
But the Bechtel critics returned to find their power was about to be diluted. Two months after the court ruling, the Legislature, in a late-night vote, expanded the three-member Turnpike Authority board to five, giving Swift two new appointees and making Bechtel's critics a minority.
Former State Representative Joseph Sullivan, as cochairman of the Legislature's Transportation Committee, wrote the bill. Sullivan said he moved to expand the Turnpike Authority board to provide greater community input into the Big Dig, and not to help Bechtel.
A few months earlier, Sullivan had considered a run for lieutenant governor. Among the advisers he sought out was Paven, Bechtel's top lobbyist in Boston.
Sullivan sought Paven's counsel on at least three occasions to discuss a potential run, even relying on Paven to recruit pollsters and other strategists, interviews with those involved revealed.
"Andy [Paven] introduced me to him," said pollster Irwin "Tubby" Harrison, who met with Sullivan and Paven at the Federalist restaurant in the shadow of the State House in December 2001 -- a month when Paven donated the maximum $200 to Sullivan's campaign.
"Other than talking about the possibility of his running for lieutenant governor, I don't recall much," Harrison said.
Paven would not comment on any meetings with Sullivan about a race for lieutenant governor. But he did acknowledge speaking to Sullivan from "time to time" to argue Bechtel's side of the negotiations with the Turnpike Authority.
Sullivan, a Braintree Democrat who left the Legislature last month to head the state Lottery Commission, said he had known Paven, a Quincy native, for many years. He consulted Paven as a friend, Sullivan said.
State Senator Robert A. Havern, cochairman of the Transportation Committee with Sullivan, said it was clear that expanding the board would help Bechtel. Havern said he and his Senate colleagues had actually wanted to keep the board intact and to "let the negotiations play out" between Bechtel and the Turnpike Authority. But Havern said he changed his mind out of deference to Sullivan.
Swift filled the two newly created seats on the Turnpike Authority board with developer and longtime GOP contributor Richard K. Anderson and veteran lawyer John "Jack" Moscardelli.
Moscardelli is a close friend and jogging partner of Peter Berlandi, Bechtel's chief State House strategist for half a decade. Moscardelli said he has no ties with Bechtel.
Since Swift appointed the new board members, negotiations aimed at getting money back from Bechtel have stalled.
At the talks, Cronin argues on behalf of Bechtel and the Turnpike relies on Leonard L. Lewin, the former chief counsel to the Cellucci and Swift administrations. Lewin, who would not comment, is no stranger to Cronin. In fact, he worked side-by-side with Cronin during his stint as chief counsel in Swift's appearances before the state's Ethics Commission.
Lewin and Cronin have not had much negotiating to do, however. Turnpike lawyers say Bechtel officials rarely agree to meet for talks, and when they do, they send Cronin and lower-level employees with no decision-making power.
If negotiations ultimately fail, as officials on both sides have predicted, the state would face a fork in the road: Sue Bechtel, or drop the pursuit of reimbursement entirely.
The one means foreiting a decade's worth of overruns. The other route would mean a long, costly legal battle.
Either way, Bechtel's Boston lobbyists would be well positioned to push the company's cause with policymakers. After all, the lobbying firm, O'Neill and Associates, signed a contract in December with the Executive Office of Transportation and Construction, the same state agency that pays Bechtel for its work on the Big Dig.
Globe correspondent Joseph Spurr contributed to this report. Raphael Lewis can be reached by e-mail at rlewis@globe.com. Sean P. Murphy can be reached at smurph@globe.com.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 2/11/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
February 10, 2003 Boston Big Dig Part Two - State's cost-recovery efforts have been nearly a lost cause
Following article was published by the Boston Globe
Crews working in the section of the tunnel between Haymarket Square and North Station found hundreds discrepancies between the design drawings and the actual site conditions. (Globe Staff Photo / David L. Ryan)
PART TWO
State's cost-recovery efforts have been nearly a lost cause
By Sean P. Murphy and Raphael Lewis Globe Staff, 2/10/2003
n Jan. 26, 2000, state officials convened a high-level meeting to consider whether the Big Dig's managers owed taxpayers a refund for mistakes.
The project's budget had ballooned by $1.4 billion, despite public assertions to the contrary. And the managers, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, a private, for-profit company, had contributed to the budget crisis through a series of mistakes and misjudgments. Yet when it came time for the Cost Recovery Committee to decide, the officials agreed: No refund. They had never demanded a refund from Bechtel.
Created in 1994 to pinpoint design and management mistakes, the Cost Recovery Committee routinely overlooked or excused Bechtel's errors, according to a Globe examination of project records.
What made the January meeting really unusual, however, was that it had taken place at all. Until then, the Cost Recovery Committee had not met or taken a single official action since Feb. 2, 1998 -- two years earlier -- records show.
Cost recovery "was admittedly never the front-burner issue for me," said Michael P. Lewis, who served as the Cost Recovery Committee chairman as well as the project's state design director. "Perfection was not the standard." he added.
Lewis's very involvement in the committee raises questions. As the state's Big Dig design director, Lewis had overseen Bechtel's management of the design phase. To review Bechtel's work meant passing judgment on his own supervision of Bechtel. Lewis now serves as the state's Big Dig project director.
Bechtel, too, had a conflict of interest in cost recovery, the Globe found. State procedures called for Bechtel "to identify issues of potential cost recovery," which meant the state relied on Bechtel to point out flaws in its own designs and management.
Now, with the federal government unwilling to pay new cost increases in the Big Dig, state officials say they are prepared to pursue Bechtel for the company's mistakes. In 2001, they eliminated the Cost Recovery Committee. It had returned only a single payment of $35,707 in eight years -- and in that case, not from Bechtel but from a smaller design firm supervised by Bechtel. The committee's responsibilities were turned over to state lawyers.
But they failed to get back any money after 15 months on the job. So late last month, the Turnpike Authority, which oversees the Big Dig, made another change, handing cost recovery responsibilities to a retired family court judge. Turnpike officials cited a need for an independent review when they hired Edward M. Ginsburg.
But the clock is ticking. The statute of limitations prohibits the state from pursuing cases that date back more than three or six years, depending on whether the case is for breach of contract or negligent performance. That means much of the work that went into the Big Dig, including the entire Ted Williams Tunnel, is now almost certainly off-limits to Ginsburg and his staff.
What's more, Bechtel spurned a state request in January 2002 to waive the legal limitation on review of all of its work. The company said it would only waive the limit on individual cases.
To recover anything at all, Ginsburg must overcome the state's poor record-keeping. No neat summary of design and management problems exists. And the state never kept a running account on Bechtel's performance, either. In 1997, the state decided to evaluate Bechtel every six months, but quickly dropped that initiative, the Globe found.
So Ginsburg must start from scratch -- plowing ahead with little experience in construction law and no knowledge of the Big Dig's long and complicated history.
Peter Pendergast, the former Turnpike Authority general counsel who arrived at the agency in the wake of the 2000 cost overrun scandal, said he was startled by the project's flimsy records and the conflict of interest of those involved in cost recovery. "Cost recovery was a process that appeared as though it was designed to fail," Pendergast said.
"The numbers speak volumes about the effectiveness of the program," he said, noting the committee's record of only $35,707 in refunds.
After a year of interviewing Big Dig officials and scrutinizing tens of thousands of pages of documents, the Globe found major lapses in the state's oversight of the Big Dig:
The state's contract with Bechtel was fundamentally flawed, effectively rewarding the engineering behemoth for delays and overruns. Because the state pays Bechtel on an hourly basis, rather than setting specific prices for various jobs, Bechtel will receive more than $2 billion by the time the project is completed, including about $180 million in profit. Before all of the delays and cost overruns, Bechtel was projected to receive a much more modest $350 million in gross receipts and roughly $38 million in profit.
Faced with thousands of cost overruns potentially tied to its own work, Bechtel referred just three to the Cost Recovery Committee for further investigation, according to records. On 12 other occasions, the state or the federal government initiated cost-recovery cases against Bechtel. Meanwhile, the state approved thousands of cost overruns to make up for mistakes or omissions related, either directly or indirectly, to Bechtel's design or management, records show.
The Cost Recovery Committee exonerated Bechtel in all 15 cases it considered against the company.
On at least two occasions state officials rejected evidence presented to them by an independent specialist that Bechtel mismanagement was at the heart of costly delays. In one instance, a state-hired engineer cited Bechtel for being "remiss" in its management of the design of the Fort Point Channel tunnels in 1992, which fell behind schedule for eight months. But state officials met with the engineer to discuss revising his report. In his final report, Bechtel's management was not faulted at all. In the second instance, the engineer found that Bechtel had failed to make sure that designs for a huge concrete wall were sound. The wall had to be torn down and rebuilt, at a cost of an extra $31 million. Bechtel paid none of it.
'Trust and confidence'
When Bechtel/Parsons arrived in Boston, trumpeting almost 200 years of construction experience, it cut a unique agreement with the state. In December 1985 the state signed the first of 16 contracts granting the massive engineering firm the power to act as a virtual extension of government.
Where standard government contracts keep companies such as Bechtel at a distance, even hiring specialists to oversee their work, state officials envisioned a different approach in Massachusetts. Theirs would be a "very special owner/management consultant relationship of trust and confidence," according to the contractual terms agreed upon by the two sides.
But while the state pledged its trust in Bechtel, the giant engineering firm left nothing to chance when it came to making a profit on the Big Dig.
According to the company's contracts, the state pays Bechtel's 500 or so employees by the hour, on a "pay as you go" basis. That means that whenever a delay or mistake occurs, Bechtel gets paid for more work, rather than being forced to swallow some of the costs of its errors. Sometimes, the state pays Bechtel engineers at overtime rates to correct its own mistakes, according to project records. Roughly 10 percent of Bechtel's work in its current contract has qualified as overtime.
And the state pays some Bechtel employees far more generously than its own workers. Bechtel's project manager, C. Matthew Wiley, makes $290,000 a year, records show, nearly twice the salary of the state's project director, Lewis, to whom Wiley reports. Another 84 Bechtel employees are paid more than $100,000 a year, records show.
The state also guarantees Bechtel a minimum 7 percent profit, no matter if the project runs late or over budget. Until February 2001, the guaranteed profit reached 11 percent and even 20 percent for select construction work.
The contracts built a firewall around Bechtel's profits. No matter how much money Bechtel's errors and poor decisions cost taxpayers, the contracts capped Bechtel's liability at $100 million. That's less than 5 percent of all the money Bechtel will charge the state for its work. And it's $80 million less than what Bechtel will make in profit.
In an interview, Wiley said that Bechtel "performed admirably" to a higher professional standard "than required in our contract." Concerning issues with the quality of Bechtel's work, Wiley said: "We've said a number of times we are willing to comply with the contract. If there are issues, we are willing to discuss them."
'Their fingerprints are all over the design'
In defending Bechtel, Wiley said his company's role as project manager has been "frequently misunderstood" by critics and the public.
That role, as it relates to cost overruns, is fairly straightforward. When problems arise on construction sites, it's the project manager's job to figure out what went wrong, get the problem solved, and assign blame. Bechtel has acted as the traffic cop at the busy intersection of more than 50 design contracts and nearly 110 construction contracts doing almost $15 billion in work.
But because the state also hired Bechtel as the chief designer of the entire Central Artery/Tunnel project, it relied on Bechtel to pass judgment on its own design work. And design permeates every aspect of the Big Dig, from devising traffic plans to choosing the path of tunnels to picking the color of roadside barriers. All bids for construction are based on the designs, which provide step-by-step instructions for building each piece of the project. Thus, almost all construction claims for overruns are based on design problems, usually because contractors claim that their jobs required more work than was set out in the original plans.
Bechtel did not do all of the project design itself. The company set the design process in motion with preliminary drawings that comprised about 30 percent of what was needed to build the project. Then, Bechtel turned to smaller firms for design completion, which answered to Bechtel. Bechtel reserved for itself all fundamental design decisions -- the what, where, and how of the project. Bechtel remained involved throughout the process by conducting regular reviews.
When construction companies complained of design errors or omissions, Bechtel had a contractual responsibility in its other role as project manager to discover the underlying reason behind them -- a designer's mistake, perhaps, or a flawed work zone survey, according to project officials.
It was Bechtel's job to figure out who was at fault for the problem. Indeed, the Cost Recovery Committee's procedures relied on Bechtel "to identify issues of potential cost recovery . . . involving a design professional's performance."
During the eight years of the Cost Recovery Committee's operation, more than 10,000 overruns were approved, totaling $1.4 billion, records show. Bechtel reviewed and recommended that the state pay all the overruns. And yet hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the overruns were rooted in missing or incorrect information in the designs process supervised by Bechtel.
But Bechtel almost never assigned blame. Despite its contractual obligations, the company only three times flagged a cost overrun that prompted the Cost Recovery Committee to scrutinize Bechtel -- for a potential total of $48,911, records show.
In those three cases, the committee voted against asking Bechtel to pay up.
As for the work of the smaller design firms, Bechtel referred alleged mistakes by those companies to the committee only 17 times, records show.
Of those cases, just one firm, Lin Associates, agreed to reimburse the state for work that had to be done over. According to project records, Lin's faulty design of a temporary road in South Boston cost the state an extra $339,198. Lin settled that claim in 1996 by refunding the state for about 10 percent of the actual cost of repaving the road -- $35,707, records show.
That payment represents the total financial accomplishment of Bechtel and the Cost Recovery Committee in finding fault for engineering mistakes. Meanwhile, the design firms have received just under $1 billion in fees, roughly double what Bechtel had estimated at the project's outset. Bechtel itself received $341 million for its design efforts. The company declined to provide a breakdown of that sum to show what portion of its design receipts came as a result of cost overruns.
In an interview, lawyer David J. Hatem, who represents both Bechtel and the other design firms on the Big Dig, acknowledged a conflict of interest in Bechtel's judgment of the design firms it oversees.
"Their fingerprints are all over the design, all over the review process," Hatem said of Bechtel. "It's rare that you find a design issue that" doesn't in some way trace back to Bechtel.
Hatem said that, because the state's cost-recovery efforts to date have been so limited, he has rarely had to defend Bechtel or the other design firms. "Cost recovery has not consumed much of my time," he said.
But Hatem said he is girding for a "flurry of activity" as project construction comes to an end and the state shifts its attention to conducting a "lookback."
As for the state losing the legal opportunity to pursue cost recovery because of the statute of limitations, Hatem said the state faces a "tricky act" in trying to preserve its rights. "It's something" the state "has to keep its eye on."
'Bechtel is going to protect its interests'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Globe Staff Photo / David L. Ryan)
'Cost recovery "was admittedly never the front burner issue for me," said Michael P. Lewis (above), who server as committee chairman. "Perfection was not the standards."'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On at least one occasion, a design firm seemed to exploit Bechtel's dual role to avoid paying for alleged mistakes.
When threatened with losing a portion of its fee for an alleged design error, the firm Jacobs Sverdrup sent a June 21, 2000, letter to Bechtel saying that if Jacobs Sverdrup had to pay, it may be "necessary to seek recovery of the fee from other potential culpable parties, which is certainly not in the interest of the project."
The other "potential culpable parties" would include, most prominently, Bechtel itself. The case against Jacobs Sverdrup is still pending. A spokeman for the firm declined comment. Kurt Dettman, the Big Dig's chief counsel, said the state must overcome Bechtel's conflict of interest if it ever hopes to recover any money.
Since Bechtel employees staff most of the project jobs, "They are the ones who know most of the facts on the project, the ones who made most of the decisions on the project," he said. To pursue a case against Bechtel means calling Bechtel employees to give testimony against Bechtel, he said.
"When your prime witness is going to be the party you are going after, that's an issue," he said. "Bechtel is going to protect its corporate interests," he added. "We are going to protect the taxpayer interests. The two aren't always the same."
'It was not designed to be punitive'
In the early days of the project, the state and Bechtel acted as though their interests were quite similar, if not exactly the same. There was no formal procedure to oversee Bechtel's performance at all until 1994 -- when the federal government insisted that the state create one.
Under the threat of losing federal funding, project officials assembled the Cost Recovery Committee. The group -- made up of Lewis, state construction manager Joseph J. Allegro, and Federal Highway Administration project engineer Alex Almeida -- was to meet at lease monthly to scrutinize construction overruns and determine if the public deserved a refund for any errors or omissions, according to committee rules.
Lewis now says the chief purpose of the committee was "to assure quality." Recovering costs, despite the committee's name, was not its primary objective, he said. "It was not designed to be punitive," he said.
'They're all on the same team'
While the state approved thousands of construction cost increases, the committee considered only 15 cases challenging the quality of Bechtel's management of the project, almost always as a "co-target" with one of the smaller design firms Bechtel supervised; in 69 cases, smaller design firms alone were targeted.
In the 15 cases involving Bechtel, the committee exonerated the firm each time. Due to its conflicting roles, Bechtel had provided much of the documentary evidence the committee relied upon to make its decisions, records show.
From 1994 to the spring of 1997, the group met regularly at the project's South Station headquarters, keeping a record of its actions and cases.
But records show that by Feb. 2, 1998, after roughly three years and some 45 meetings, the committee had stopped convening.
The period during which the committee failed to meet coincided with some of the project's sharpest cost growth -- $1.4 billion in construction overruns, project records show. None received more than the most routine scrutiny by the state.
Lewis, who headed the Cost Recovery Committee, insisted that the group continued to meet after Feb. 2, 1998, but that no records of the committee's actions were kept. He asserted that meetings took place irregularly, informally, with no minutes taken -- and with no actions taken.
But the records of Cost Recovery Committee meetings kept by Almeida, the Federal Highway Administration engineer, call Lewis's account into question. Those records show regular committee activity between the group's founding in 1994 and Feb. 2, 1998, including hand-written notes on the margins of meeting agendas describing the committee's actions on specific cases. After Feb. 2, 1998, no cost-recovery documentation exists until the Jan. 26, 2000, meeting.
Almeida said in an interview that he recalled informal cost-recovery discussions at the conclusion of meetings on other project business. He acknowledged, however, that recovering costs was secondary to the construction work, and as a result, finding fault for cost overruns suffered from a lack of attention. "I would say we probably were not the most timely that I think we could have been," Almeida said.
Pendergast, the Turnpike Authority's former general counsel, attributed the lack of cost recovery to the sense of loyalty that state project officials had for Bechtel after working so closely for so many years.
"The state, Bechtel -- you couldn't differentiate," Pendergast said. "It was like a regional high school. The kids are from different towns, but they're all on the same team. It's very human, but . . . the citizens of the commonwealth were not well represented."
'They didn't want to spend the money'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By appointing Bechtel as both the project manager and chief designer, the state allowed Bechtel to judge its own work, an inherent conflict of interest.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In four of the 15 cases against Bechtel, state officials hired an independent specialist to help judge the company's performance. Each time, they turned to a consultant named Philip Helmes, an experienced engineer. But although officials turned to Helmes for guidance, they did not always follow his advice.
In 1994 the Cost Recovery Committee assigned Helmes to determine fault for a $31 million overrun linked to the redesigning of a 600-foot wall built as part of the Ted Williams Tunnel near Logan Airport. During construction, the wall shifted 8 inches, signaling the potential for a deadly collapse. It had to be torn down and rebuilt.
Helmes concluded that the design firm that planned the wall had relied upon incorrect calculations, and that Bechtel had neglected to show the design drawings to its geotechnical specialists. Had the specialists seen the designs, Helmes found, the wall could have been properly built -- and $31 million could have been saved. But the state did not pursue Bechtel. Instead, officials chose to file a claim with the state's insurance carrier, thus avoiding a confrontation with Bechtel.
But Bechtel failed to properly manage the insurance claim failed, according to the finding of an arbitrator. Bechtel, in charge of filing insurance claims on behalf of the state, missed the deadline, the arbitrator ruled. The late filing meant the insurance company's adjusters lost the opportunity to investigate the construction site, the insurance company contended. The insurance company paid the state nothing.
Bechtel officials declined to comment on the missed deadline or the wall movement. There are no plans to reopen the case.
The state also assigned Helmes in 1994 to determine the cause of a delay in the design of the tunnel running under the Fort Point Channel. Bechtel and the firm completing its preliminary drawings, Maguire/Harris, had clashed over the viability of Bechtel's design. And according to Helmes's report, Bechtel, as design manager, failed to take steps to resolve the dispute. Finally, when state officials heard of the dispute, they brokered a deal to end the impasse. But eight months of delay had occurred -- on a project in which each day of delay can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In his first report, Helmes concluded that Bechtel had not managed the situation well, "which impaired project productivity." He cited Bechtel, along with Maguire, as "remiss."
But project officials did not accept Helmes's conclusions, Helmes said. After a first draft of his findings circulated among project executives, Lewis met with Helmes. Although current and former project officials were tight-lipped about what transpired, Lewis acknowledged "working with" Helmes to help the consultant "look at the facts."
What is clear is that eventually Helmes concluded "that all parties" -- Bechtel and Maguire/Harris -- "performed with a reasonable standard of care" on "this very complicated and unique design challenge." Where the report once said that design "was not well managed by Bechtel," it now read: "Solutions could have been developed earlier."
Lewis said of Helmes: "I'm quite confident he didn't do anything he wasn't comfortable with."
Helmes agreed that he did not feel pressured to change the report. He said he dropped his conclusion that Bechtel was remiss because the state would not agree to his request for more time to investigate further and nail down his preliminary finding. "It was stopped," he said, of his review of Bechtel. "Apparently, they didn't want to spend the money."
'Records get lost, memories fade'
If the state has any hope of recovering money from Bechtel and the other design firms, it will need accurate, detailed records. But the records compiled by the state are in disarray, the Globe found.
Project officials cannot even agree on the status of 13 of the 84 cost-recovery cases the Cost Recovery Committee initiated. State records show the cases as open. Federal records show them as closed, with the usual results: No findings against either Bechtel or the design firms it managed.
It's not a small matter whether the cases are open or closed: Those 13 cases alone are worth at least $14.5 million in potential refunds to the state, records show.
The cost-recovery files constitute a hodgepodge of memos, tracking forms, letters to and from Bechtel, and financial assessments. Fewer than half a dozen files contain anything resembling a coherent assessment of the facts behind a cost overrun.
Many are handwritten, some almost illegibly. The files contain official documents incompletely filled out, others undated. Several files were actually lost and "re-created" by officials in the late 1990s, officials said.
Lewis and Dettman said they can't find any documents created by the Cost Recovery Committee to keep track of its cases from 1994 to 1997, and in 2000. Yet copies of those records are on file with the Federal Highway Administration in Cambridge.
Dettman, the top lawyer at the Big Dig, helped draft the cost-recovery procedures in 1994. He now says he was dismayed by the committee's poor record. But while Dettman says he complained to the last three Big Dig project directors of the committee's flagging efforts, he acknowledged his internal warnings changed nothing.
"We are playing the cards we have been dealt," Dettman said of state efforts to get refunds. "We are going to take it as far as we can. Records get lost, memories fade, people die. There will be defenses available to the other side."
The state's heavy reliance on Bechtel to recover money was made clear on Jan. 14, 2000, when Joseph Allegro, the state construction manager, made an eleventh-hour stab at recouping costs, three weeks before officials disclosed the $1.4 billion cost overrun.
In a brief e-mail, Allegro ordered eight engineers to scour their files for evidence of past mistakes by Bechtel or the smaller design firms under Bechtel's supervision. Three of the eight engineers addressed by Allegro worked for the state, but the other five belonged to Bechtel.
"Don't spend a tremendous amount of time," Allegro wrote. "This is not to second-guess anyone's judgment, but to simply ensure nothing fell through the cracks." Allegro got the results he might have expected: No new cases against Bechtel.
'We're playing a massive game of catch-up'
Now, as the Big Dig drags to completion, with more than two years to go, the state is showing greater interest in recovering money from Bechtel, even though the statute of limitations may cut off refunds on overruns dating back to the project's first 11 years.
Still, Lewis suggested the state could get around the statute in some cases by claiming it should not apply to contracts that are still open, no matter how long ago the individual overrun occurred. "I do feel very strongly we need to do an assessment of Bechtel," Lewis said. "I think we can still assess the whole record."
But Dettman, who led cost-recovery efforts until Ginsburg's appointment, said the difficulty of overcoming the statute of limitations makes review of some Bechtel errors pointless. "We're not going to spend a whole bunch of time" on old cases, he said.
The Cost Recovery Committee, which met only three times in 2000, had its last official meeting on Feb. 26, 2001, records show.
Some 250 cost-recovery cases have opened since November 2000, the vast majority of them involving potential claims against the smaller design firms that completed Bechtel's drawings. Still, Dettman insists that Bechtel is a target in every one of them.
"We're going to treat Bechtel like any other contractor," he said recently, before cost-recovery responsibilities moved to Ginsburg.
Bechtel is hanging tough. The company refused to sign an agreement to stop the statute of limitations clock from ticking down on its work, except in three cases. Instead, it has forced the state to quickly compile detailed cases involving allegations of Bechtel errors or mismanagement. "We're playing a massive game of catch-up," Dettman said.
To help the state, Dettman hired consultants to sift through what remains of the evidence. Their primary job, he said, was to find cost overruns that have yet to expire. After that, they were supposed to figure out if the state has a strong enough case to warrant pursuing Bechtel. The consultants hired by Dettman have cost taxpayers more than $6 million so far -- without returning a penny.
But no review undertaken at this late date will turn back the clock on the thousands of overruns from the project's earliest years, Dettman acknowledged. Asked how many cases against Bechtel may have been missed through the years, Dettman replied: "I don't know. I don't think anyone knows."
Globe reporter Thomas C. Palmer Jr. contributed to this story. Sean P. Murphy can be reached by e-mail at smurph@globe.com. Raphael Lewis can be reached at rlewis@globe.com.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 2/10/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
Crews working in the section of the tunnel between Haymarket Square and North Station found hundreds discrepancies between the design drawings and the actual site conditions. (Globe Staff Photo / David L. Ryan) PART TWO
State's cost-recovery efforts have been nearly a lost cause
By Sean P. Murphy and Raphael Lewis Globe Staff, 2/10/2003
n Jan. 26, 2000, state officials convened a high-level meeting to consider whether the Big Dig's managers owed taxpayers a refund for mistakes.
The project's budget had ballooned by $1.4 billion, despite public assertions to the contrary. And the managers, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, a private, for-profit company, had contributed to the budget crisis through a series of mistakes and misjudgments. Yet when it came time for the Cost Recovery Committee to decide, the officials agreed: No refund. They had never demanded a refund from Bechtel.
Created in 1994 to pinpoint design and management mistakes, the Cost Recovery Committee routinely overlooked or excused Bechtel's errors, according to a Globe examination of project records.
What made the January meeting really unusual, however, was that it had taken place at all. Until then, the Cost Recovery Committee had not met or taken a single official action since Feb. 2, 1998 -- two years earlier -- records show.
Cost recovery "was admittedly never the front-burner issue for me," said Michael P. Lewis, who served as the Cost Recovery Committee chairman as well as the project's state design director. "Perfection was not the standard." he added.
Lewis's very involvement in the committee raises questions. As the state's Big Dig design director, Lewis had overseen Bechtel's management of the design phase. To review Bechtel's work meant passing judgment on his own supervision of Bechtel. Lewis now serves as the state's Big Dig project director.
Bechtel, too, had a conflict of interest in cost recovery, the Globe found. State procedures called for Bechtel "to identify issues of potential cost recovery," which meant the state relied on Bechtel to point out flaws in its own designs and management.
Now, with the federal government unwilling to pay new cost increases in the Big Dig, state officials say they are prepared to pursue Bechtel for the company's mistakes. In 2001, they eliminated the Cost Recovery Committee. It had returned only a single payment of $35,707 in eight years -- and in that case, not from Bechtel but from a smaller design firm supervised by Bechtel. The committee's responsibilities were turned over to state lawyers.
But they failed to get back any money after 15 months on the job. So late last month, the Turnpike Authority, which oversees the Big Dig, made another change, handing cost recovery responsibilities to a retired family court judge. Turnpike officials cited a need for an independent review when they hired Edward M. Ginsburg.
But the clock is ticking. The statute of limitations prohibits the state from pursuing cases that date back more than three or six years, depending on whether the case is for breach of contract or negligent performance. That means much of the work that went into the Big Dig, including the entire Ted Williams Tunnel, is now almost certainly off-limits to Ginsburg and his staff.
What's more, Bechtel spurned a state request in January 2002 to waive the legal limitation on review of all of its work. The company said it would only waive the limit on individual cases.
To recover anything at all, Ginsburg must overcome the state's poor record-keeping. No neat summary of design and management problems exists. And the state never kept a running account on Bechtel's performance, either. In 1997, the state decided to evaluate Bechtel every six months, but quickly dropped that initiative, the Globe found.
So Ginsburg must start from scratch -- plowing ahead with little experience in construction law and no knowledge of the Big Dig's long and complicated history.
Peter Pendergast, the former Turnpike Authority general counsel who arrived at the agency in the wake of the 2000 cost overrun scandal, said he was startled by the project's flimsy records and the conflict of interest of those involved in cost recovery. "Cost recovery was a process that appeared as though it was designed to fail," Pendergast said.
"The numbers speak volumes about the effectiveness of the program," he said, noting the committee's record of only $35,707 in refunds.
After a year of interviewing Big Dig officials and scrutinizing tens of thousands of pages of documents, the Globe found major lapses in the state's oversight of the Big Dig:
The state's contract with Bechtel was fundamentally flawed, effectively rewarding the engineering behemoth for delays and overruns. Because the state pays Bechtel on an hourly basis, rather than setting specific prices for various jobs, Bechtel will receive more than $2 billion by the time the project is completed, including about $180 million in profit. Before all of the delays and cost overruns, Bechtel was projected to receive a much more modest $350 million in gross receipts and roughly $38 million in profit.
Faced with thousands of cost overruns potentially tied to its own work, Bechtel referred just three to the Cost Recovery Committee for further investigation, according to records. On 12 other occasions, the state or the federal government initiated cost-recovery cases against Bechtel. Meanwhile, the state approved thousands of cost overruns to make up for mistakes or omissions related, either directly or indirectly, to Bechtel's design or management, records show.
The Cost Recovery Committee exonerated Bechtel in all 15 cases it considered against the company.
On at least two occasions state officials rejected evidence presented to them by an independent specialist that Bechtel mismanagement was at the heart of costly delays. In one instance, a state-hired engineer cited Bechtel for being "remiss" in its management of the design of the Fort Point Channel tunnels in 1992, which fell behind schedule for eight months. But state officials met with the engineer to discuss revising his report. In his final report, Bechtel's management was not faulted at all. In the second instance, the engineer found that Bechtel had failed to make sure that designs for a huge concrete wall were sound. The wall had to be torn down and rebuilt, at a cost of an extra $31 million. Bechtel paid none of it.
'Trust and confidence'
When Bechtel/Parsons arrived in Boston, trumpeting almost 200 years of construction experience, it cut a unique agreement with the state. In December 1985 the state signed the first of 16 contracts granting the massive engineering firm the power to act as a virtual extension of government.
Where standard government contracts keep companies such as Bechtel at a distance, even hiring specialists to oversee their work, state officials envisioned a different approach in Massachusetts. Theirs would be a "very special owner/management consultant relationship of trust and confidence," according to the contractual terms agreed upon by the two sides.
But while the state pledged its trust in Bechtel, the giant engineering firm left nothing to chance when it came to making a profit on the Big Dig.
According to the company's contracts, the state pays Bechtel's 500 or so employees by the hour, on a "pay as you go" basis. That means that whenever a delay or mistake occurs, Bechtel gets paid for more work, rather than being forced to swallow some of the costs of its errors. Sometimes, the state pays Bechtel engineers at overtime rates to correct its own mistakes, according to project records. Roughly 10 percent of Bechtel's work in its current contract has qualified as overtime.
And the state pays some Bechtel employees far more generously than its own workers. Bechtel's project manager, C. Matthew Wiley, makes $290,000 a year, records show, nearly twice the salary of the state's project director, Lewis, to whom Wiley reports. Another 84 Bechtel employees are paid more than $100,000 a year, records show.
The state also guarantees Bechtel a minimum 7 percent profit, no matter if the project runs late or over budget. Until February 2001, the guaranteed profit reached 11 percent and even 20 percent for select construction work.
The contracts built a firewall around Bechtel's profits. No matter how much money Bechtel's errors and poor decisions cost taxpayers, the contracts capped Bechtel's liability at $100 million. That's less than 5 percent of all the money Bechtel will charge the state for its work. And it's $80 million less than what Bechtel will make in profit.
In an interview, Wiley said that Bechtel "performed admirably" to a higher professional standard "than required in our contract." Concerning issues with the quality of Bechtel's work, Wiley said: "We've said a number of times we are willing to comply with the contract. If there are issues, we are willing to discuss them."
'Their fingerprints are all over the design'
In defending Bechtel, Wiley said his company's role as project manager has been "frequently misunderstood" by critics and the public.
That role, as it relates to cost overruns, is fairly straightforward. When problems arise on construction sites, it's the project manager's job to figure out what went wrong, get the problem solved, and assign blame. Bechtel has acted as the traffic cop at the busy intersection of more than 50 design contracts and nearly 110 construction contracts doing almost $15 billion in work.
But because the state also hired Bechtel as the chief designer of the entire Central Artery/Tunnel project, it relied on Bechtel to pass judgment on its own design work. And design permeates every aspect of the Big Dig, from devising traffic plans to choosing the path of tunnels to picking the color of roadside barriers. All bids for construction are based on the designs, which provide step-by-step instructions for building each piece of the project. Thus, almost all construction claims for overruns are based on design problems, usually because contractors claim that their jobs required more work than was set out in the original plans.
Bechtel did not do all of the project design itself. The company set the design process in motion with preliminary drawings that comprised about 30 percent of what was needed to build the project. Then, Bechtel turned to smaller firms for design completion, which answered to Bechtel. Bechtel reserved for itself all fundamental design decisions -- the what, where, and how of the project. Bechtel remained involved throughout the process by conducting regular reviews.
When construction companies complained of design errors or omissions, Bechtel had a contractual responsibility in its other role as project manager to discover the underlying reason behind them -- a designer's mistake, perhaps, or a flawed work zone survey, according to project officials.
It was Bechtel's job to figure out who was at fault for the problem. Indeed, the Cost Recovery Committee's procedures relied on Bechtel "to identify issues of potential cost recovery . . . involving a design professional's performance."
During the eight years of the Cost Recovery Committee's operation, more than 10,000 overruns were approved, totaling $1.4 billion, records show. Bechtel reviewed and recommended that the state pay all the overruns. And yet hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the overruns were rooted in missing or incorrect information in the designs process supervised by Bechtel.
But Bechtel almost never assigned blame. Despite its contractual obligations, the company only three times flagged a cost overrun that prompted the Cost Recovery Committee to scrutinize Bechtel -- for a potential total of $48,911, records show.
In those three cases, the committee voted against asking Bechtel to pay up.
As for the work of the smaller design firms, Bechtel referred alleged mistakes by those companies to the committee only 17 times, records show.
Of those cases, just one firm, Lin Associates, agreed to reimburse the state for work that had to be done over. According to project records, Lin's faulty design of a temporary road in South Boston cost the state an extra $339,198. Lin settled that claim in 1996 by refunding the state for about 10 percent of the actual cost of repaving the road -- $35,707, records show.
That payment represents the total financial accomplishment of Bechtel and the Cost Recovery Committee in finding fault for engineering mistakes. Meanwhile, the design firms have received just under $1 billion in fees, roughly double what Bechtel had estimated at the project's outset. Bechtel itself received $341 million for its design efforts. The company declined to provide a breakdown of that sum to show what portion of its design receipts came as a result of cost overruns.
In an interview, lawyer David J. Hatem, who represents both Bechtel and the other design firms on the Big Dig, acknowledged a conflict of interest in Bechtel's judgment of the design firms it oversees.
"Their fingerprints are all over the design, all over the review process," Hatem said of Bechtel. "It's rare that you find a design issue that" doesn't in some way trace back to Bechtel.
Hatem said that, because the state's cost-recovery efforts to date have been so limited, he has rarely had to defend Bechtel or the other design firms. "Cost recovery has not consumed much of my time," he said.
But Hatem said he is girding for a "flurry of activity" as project construction comes to an end and the state shifts its attention to conducting a "lookback."
As for the state losing the legal opportunity to pursue cost recovery because of the statute of limitations, Hatem said the state faces a "tricky act" in trying to preserve its rights. "It's something" the state "has to keep its eye on."
'Bechtel is going to protect its interests'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Globe Staff Photo / David L. Ryan)
'Cost recovery "was admittedly never the front burner issue for me," said Michael P. Lewis (above), who server as committee chairman. "Perfection was not the standards."'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On at least one occasion, a design firm seemed to exploit Bechtel's dual role to avoid paying for alleged mistakes.
When threatened with losing a portion of its fee for an alleged design error, the firm Jacobs Sverdrup sent a June 21, 2000, letter to Bechtel saying that if Jacobs Sverdrup had to pay, it may be "necessary to seek recovery of the fee from other potential culpable parties, which is certainly not in the interest of the project."
The other "potential culpable parties" would include, most prominently, Bechtel itself. The case against Jacobs Sverdrup is still pending. A spokeman for the firm declined comment. Kurt Dettman, the Big Dig's chief counsel, said the state must overcome Bechtel's conflict of interest if it ever hopes to recover any money.
Since Bechtel employees staff most of the project jobs, "They are the ones who know most of the facts on the project, the ones who made most of the decisions on the project," he said. To pursue a case against Bechtel means calling Bechtel employees to give testimony against Bechtel, he said.
"When your prime witness is going to be the party you are going after, that's an issue," he said. "Bechtel is going to protect its corporate interests," he added. "We are going to protect the taxpayer interests. The two aren't always the same."
'It was not designed to be punitive'
In the early days of the project, the state and Bechtel acted as though their interests were quite similar, if not exactly the same. There was no formal procedure to oversee Bechtel's performance at all until 1994 -- when the federal government insisted that the state create one.
Under the threat of losing federal funding, project officials assembled the Cost Recovery Committee. The group -- made up of Lewis, state construction manager Joseph J. Allegro, and Federal Highway Administration project engineer Alex Almeida -- was to meet at lease monthly to scrutinize construction overruns and determine if the public deserved a refund for any errors or omissions, according to committee rules.
Lewis now says the chief purpose of the committee was "to assure quality." Recovering costs, despite the committee's name, was not its primary objective, he said. "It was not designed to be punitive," he said.
'They're all on the same team'
While the state approved thousands of construction cost increases, the committee considered only 15 cases challenging the quality of Bechtel's management of the project, almost always as a "co-target" with one of the smaller design firms Bechtel supervised; in 69 cases, smaller design firms alone were targeted.
In the 15 cases involving Bechtel, the committee exonerated the firm each time. Due to its conflicting roles, Bechtel had provided much of the documentary evidence the committee relied upon to make its decisions, records show.
From 1994 to the spring of 1997, the group met regularly at the project's South Station headquarters, keeping a record of its actions and cases.
But records show that by Feb. 2, 1998, after roughly three years and some 45 meetings, the committee had stopped convening.
The period during which the committee failed to meet coincided with some of the project's sharpest cost growth -- $1.4 billion in construction overruns, project records show. None received more than the most routine scrutiny by the state.
Lewis, who headed the Cost Recovery Committee, insisted that the group continued to meet after Feb. 2, 1998, but that no records of the committee's actions were kept. He asserted that meetings took place irregularly, informally, with no minutes taken -- and with no actions taken.
But the records of Cost Recovery Committee meetings kept by Almeida, the Federal Highway Administration engineer, call Lewis's account into question. Those records show regular committee activity between the group's founding in 1994 and Feb. 2, 1998, including hand-written notes on the margins of meeting agendas describing the committee's actions on specific cases. After Feb. 2, 1998, no cost-recovery documentation exists until the Jan. 26, 2000, meeting.
Almeida said in an interview that he recalled informal cost-recovery discussions at the conclusion of meetings on other project business. He acknowledged, however, that recovering costs was secondary to the construction work, and as a result, finding fault for cost overruns suffered from a lack of attention. "I would say we probably were not the most timely that I think we could have been," Almeida said.
Pendergast, the Turnpike Authority's former general counsel, attributed the lack of cost recovery to the sense of loyalty that state project officials had for Bechtel after working so closely for so many years.
"The state, Bechtel -- you couldn't differentiate," Pendergast said. "It was like a regional high school. The kids are from different towns, but they're all on the same team. It's very human, but . . . the citizens of the commonwealth were not well represented."
'They didn't want to spend the money'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By appointing Bechtel as both the project manager and chief designer, the state allowed Bechtel to judge its own work, an inherent conflict of interest.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In four of the 15 cases against Bechtel, state officials hired an independent specialist to help judge the company's performance. Each time, they turned to a consultant named Philip Helmes, an experienced engineer. But although officials turned to Helmes for guidance, they did not always follow his advice.
In 1994 the Cost Recovery Committee assigned Helmes to determine fault for a $31 million overrun linked to the redesigning of a 600-foot wall built as part of the Ted Williams Tunnel near Logan Airport. During construction, the wall shifted 8 inches, signaling the potential for a deadly collapse. It had to be torn down and rebuilt.
Helmes concluded that the design firm that planned the wall had relied upon incorrect calculations, and that Bechtel had neglected to show the design drawings to its geotechnical specialists. Had the specialists seen the designs, Helmes found, the wall could have been properly built -- and $31 million could have been saved. But the state did not pursue Bechtel. Instead, officials chose to file a claim with the state's insurance carrier, thus avoiding a confrontation with Bechtel.
But Bechtel failed to properly manage the insurance claim failed, according to the finding of an arbitrator. Bechtel, in charge of filing insurance claims on behalf of the state, missed the deadline, the arbitrator ruled. The late filing meant the insurance company's adjusters lost the opportunity to investigate the construction site, the insurance company contended. The insurance company paid the state nothing.
Bechtel officials declined to comment on the missed deadline or the wall movement. There are no plans to reopen the case.
The state also assigned Helmes in 1994 to determine the cause of a delay in the design of the tunnel running under the Fort Point Channel. Bechtel and the firm completing its preliminary drawings, Maguire/Harris, had clashed over the viability of Bechtel's design. And according to Helmes's report, Bechtel, as design manager, failed to take steps to resolve the dispute. Finally, when state officials heard of the dispute, they brokered a deal to end the impasse. But eight months of delay had occurred -- on a project in which each day of delay can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In his first report, Helmes concluded that Bechtel had not managed the situation well, "which impaired project productivity." He cited Bechtel, along with Maguire, as "remiss."
But project officials did not accept Helmes's conclusions, Helmes said. After a first draft of his findings circulated among project executives, Lewis met with Helmes. Although current and former project officials were tight-lipped about what transpired, Lewis acknowledged "working with" Helmes to help the consultant "look at the facts."
What is clear is that eventually Helmes concluded "that all parties" -- Bechtel and Maguire/Harris -- "performed with a reasonable standard of care" on "this very complicated and unique design challenge." Where the report once said that design "was not well managed by Bechtel," it now read: "Solutions could have been developed earlier."
Lewis said of Helmes: "I'm quite confident he didn't do anything he wasn't comfortable with."
Helmes agreed that he did not feel pressured to change the report. He said he dropped his conclusion that Bechtel was remiss because the state would not agree to his request for more time to investigate further and nail down his preliminary finding. "It was stopped," he said, of his review of Bechtel. "Apparently, they didn't want to spend the money."
'Records get lost, memories fade'
If the state has any hope of recovering money from Bechtel and the other design firms, it will need accurate, detailed records. But the records compiled by the state are in disarray, the Globe found.
Project officials cannot even agree on the status of 13 of the 84 cost-recovery cases the Cost Recovery Committee initiated. State records show the cases as open. Federal records show them as closed, with the usual results: No findings against either Bechtel or the design firms it managed.
It's not a small matter whether the cases are open or closed: Those 13 cases alone are worth at least $14.5 million in potential refunds to the state, records show.
The cost-recovery files constitute a hodgepodge of memos, tracking forms, letters to and from Bechtel, and financial assessments. Fewer than half a dozen files contain anything resembling a coherent assessment of the facts behind a cost overrun.
Many are handwritten, some almost illegibly. The files contain official documents incompletely filled out, others undated. Several files were actually lost and "re-created" by officials in the late 1990s, officials said.
Lewis and Dettman said they can't find any documents created by the Cost Recovery Committee to keep track of its cases from 1994 to 1997, and in 2000. Yet copies of those records are on file with the Federal Highway Administration in Cambridge.
Dettman, the top lawyer at the Big Dig, helped draft the cost-recovery procedures in 1994. He now says he was dismayed by the committee's poor record. But while Dettman says he complained to the last three Big Dig project directors of the committee's flagging efforts, he acknowledged his internal warnings changed nothing.
"We are playing the cards we have been dealt," Dettman said of state efforts to get refunds. "We are going to take it as far as we can. Records get lost, memories fade, people die. There will be defenses available to the other side."
The state's heavy reliance on Bechtel to recover money was made clear on Jan. 14, 2000, when Joseph Allegro, the state construction manager, made an eleventh-hour stab at recouping costs, three weeks before officials disclosed the $1.4 billion cost overrun.
In a brief e-mail, Allegro ordered eight engineers to scour their files for evidence of past mistakes by Bechtel or the smaller design firms under Bechtel's supervision. Three of the eight engineers addressed by Allegro worked for the state, but the other five belonged to Bechtel.
"Don't spend a tremendous amount of time," Allegro wrote. "This is not to second-guess anyone's judgment, but to simply ensure nothing fell through the cracks." Allegro got the results he might have expected: No new cases against Bechtel.
'We're playing a massive game of catch-up'
Now, as the Big Dig drags to completion, with more than two years to go, the state is showing greater interest in recovering money from Bechtel, even though the statute of limitations may cut off refunds on overruns dating back to the project's first 11 years.
Still, Lewis suggested the state could get around the statute in some cases by claiming it should not apply to contracts that are still open, no matter how long ago the individual overrun occurred. "I do feel very strongly we need to do an assessment of Bechtel," Lewis said. "I think we can still assess the whole record."
But Dettman, who led cost-recovery efforts until Ginsburg's appointment, said the difficulty of overcoming the statute of limitations makes review of some Bechtel errors pointless. "We're not going to spend a whole bunch of time" on old cases, he said.
The Cost Recovery Committee, which met only three times in 2000, had its last official meeting on Feb. 26, 2001, records show.
Some 250 cost-recovery cases have opened since November 2000, the vast majority of them involving potential claims against the smaller design firms that completed Bechtel's drawings. Still, Dettman insists that Bechtel is a target in every one of them.
"We're going to treat Bechtel like any other contractor," he said recently, before cost-recovery responsibilities moved to Ginsburg.
Bechtel is hanging tough. The company refused to sign an agreement to stop the statute of limitations clock from ticking down on its work, except in three cases. Instead, it has forced the state to quickly compile detailed cases involving allegations of Bechtel errors or mismanagement. "We're playing a massive game of catch-up," Dettman said.
To help the state, Dettman hired consultants to sift through what remains of the evidence. Their primary job, he said, was to find cost overruns that have yet to expire. After that, they were supposed to figure out if the state has a strong enough case to warrant pursuing Bechtel. The consultants hired by Dettman have cost taxpayers more than $6 million so far -- without returning a penny.
But no review undertaken at this late date will turn back the clock on the thousands of overruns from the project's earliest years, Dettman acknowledged. Asked how many cases against Bechtel may have been missed through the years, Dettman replied: "I don't know. I don't think anyone knows."
Globe reporter Thomas C. Palmer Jr. contributed to this story. Sean P. Murphy can be reached by e-mail at smurph@globe.com. Raphael Lewis can be reached at rlewis@globe.com.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 2/10/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
