A Strib report, source of the above image, "Southwest LRT builder fires back on audit -- Contractor says watchdog agency's recommendations would have resulted in more delays, costs."By Janet Moore Star Tribune -July 11, 2023, saves the best 'til last.
Closing paragraphs:
This week's letter [from the LRT general contractor to the Legislative Auditor] appears to reinforce LMJV's growing frustration with the Legislative Auditor's review, claiming it "fails to appreciate the difficulty of building a $800 million project in less than four years while the plans are continually changing."
Likewise, Met Council Chair Charlie Zelle responded last month that the report's recommendations are not aligned with federal "guidance or construction law, are not appropriate for a project of this size and complexity, and in some instances could have contributed to additional delay." The council declined to comment on LMJV's letter Tuesday.
At a hearing of the Legislative Audit Commission last month, Randall defended her agency's work.
"Are we experts in transit construction? No. Are we engineers? No. We don't claim to be," Randall said. "But what we are experts on is protecting the taxpayers' dollars."
A final report on the Southwest project's financial practices is expected later this year.
[italics added] What Randall should have said is ,"We are political at our root, know nothing beyond bean counting, and are polemicists. While not without sin, we throw stones." The Legislative Auditor reports to the legislature, and we all know about them, their expertise, and their two-party finger-pointing inclinations, without even being skilled in counting beans. The legislature wants their auditor to hand them red meat to throw to the jackals of the press and public. The legislature, like Met Council, does not like having a finger of responsibility pointed at them. Met Council is full of planners, basically, who are degree holding know-nothings, with a rare exception here or there. The planning of the rail line was farmed out to a Texas firm:
LMJV doesn't attribute design issues to any particular part of the project, which is enormously complicated with 16 stations, 29 bridges and two light rail tunnels. Instead, the 11-page letter to Randall says that the overall blueprint for the project was "of poor quality," incomplete, and "contained major elements that were not fully developed or thought out."
Behnke noted that LMJV was not responsible for any scheduling delays or additional costs.
A group of consultants led by Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Operations, and Management (AECOM), a publicly traded Texas-based infrastructure consulting firm, is responsible for the Southwest's overall design and engineering work. AECOM could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
The Met Council has attributed most of Southwest's issues to squeezing a tunnel in Minneapolis' narrow Kenilworth corridor, the addition of a station in Eden Prairie as well as a $93 million crash wall separating light rail and freight trains along the route's northern stretch.
As of last month, the project reported some 1,017 change orders, which are prompted when there's a deviation from the original design, according to the Met Council. While that's not unusual for a project of Southwest's size, the recent Legislative Auditor's report recommended that the Met Council tighten its practices for managing big construction projects, particularly those regarding change orders.
Last year, the council reached an agreement with LMJV to resolve outstanding change orders and set a timeline to complete the job — "without litigation," Behnke said. The two also collaborated to minimize the impact of the Kenilworth tunnel on the Cedar Isles condominium complex, he added.
This week's letter appears to reinforce LMJV's growing frustration with the Legislative Auditor's review, claiming it "fails to appreciate the difficulty of building a $800 million project in less than four years while the plans are continually changing."
[italics added] That is Strib reporting prior to the earlier quote. So, the project was low-balled from the start to get it launched, and then realities needed to be addressed and sound building practices met. Politics, not engineering or contracting seem to be at fault, with politics up front, Met Council, and politics biting at the flanks, legislature and its auditor.
In between, competence. Adaptability. Profit taking, business being business.
...........................................
While a secular humanist, Thomas Pynchon is my "pastor," and he'd have no difficulity whatsoever understanding the entire Southwest LRT SNAFU.
SNAFUs are his specialty, and he has much clarity and insight in his writings discussing them.
_________UPDATE________
Strib, as it often does, did not link to a post of the actual letter exchanged between contractor and auditor, reporting of it at eleven pages, while a quick review of PiPress, MinnPost and MinnReformer pages for today did not find any coverage of the letter, hence, no link.
This updating is to make clear that the Crabgrass post relies entirely upon Strib's item, and earlier reporting.
Presumably Strib had the letter to review before reporting, and editorial discretion might be to not post and link in order to keep online readers online at Strib. That's only a guess.
_______FURTHER UPDATE_______
Deserving attention from within the second above quote:
Last year, the council reached an agreement with LMJV to resolve outstanding change orders and set a timeline to complete the job — "without litigation," Behnke said.
That is settling matters between buyer and seller, with the legislative auditor serving as a judgmental intermeddler (at the legislature's behest).
___________FURTHER UPDATE_________
With an apology to Strib, the reporting as quoted above did link to a previous Strib report which did link to a posted document-cloud five page item from contractor to legislative auditor. The guess here is "eleven pages" included attachments, with that earlier link being what the current report discussed. If that guess is wrong, and a second letter exists, the doc-cloud item is nonetheless helpful.
In part, it noted in early letter text:
Fortunately, the Council recognized the issues LMJV raised had sufficient merit to justify adjusting the Council's initial schedule demands and acquiesce to the baseline schedule as submitted. Thus, contrary to the OLA’s recommendation, rather than insist on receiving an inaccurate and unrealistic baseline schedule and withholding contractor payment until it received one, the Council challenged LMJV for more details on the issues related to the baseline schedule. The Council then worked to resolve these issues. As an example, the Council's executive management approached the independent rail entities to negotiate greater flexibility in their track phasing requirements. LMJV worked cooperatively with the Council throughout construction solving the underlying problems created by the railroad's demands and the constant stream of changes to the contract to mitigate costs and cost exposure for all parties which included creating a dispute process to resolve differences. This is how project problems should be resolved. Had the parties engaged in the adversarial process suggested by the OLA, the Project would now be in litigation, cost many, many millions more, and be delayed by many more years.
The report indicates by early 2022, the Metropolitan Council was obligated to spend more money on Southwest LRT than the funds committed to the project. The Council did not have enough funds to finish the project, and it also did not have enough funds to halt the project. We do not see how this is different from the practice of starting the Project with a Limited Notice to Proceed without full funding. The issue raised by the Council is avoided if the cost of projects is properly estimated and realistic contingencies put in place. This finding is consistent with recommendations of megaproject experts.
The term "megaproject" is important. It means abnormally complicated by sheer size of actions. It is better to launch with an understanding that third party request/demand encounters and soil abnormalities or other unanticipated factors increase with the mega part of megaprojects; including timeframe.
Construction contracting is not as simplistic a thing as a tight-assed general-practice auditor might prefer. See, e.g., cmu.edu "Project Management for Construction -- Fundamental Concepts for Owners, Engineers, Architects and Builders" at Chap. 8, re Pricing, for a flavor of nuances. [update - Also helpful, Chap. 11, re Advanced Scheduling Methodology]
Good Faith Avoidance of Litigation "Mess Mop-up" is good practice. Good faith adaptation in multi-year ongoing megaprojects as they evolve and encounter unanticipated chance usually is more important to ultimate success than pre-project omniscience or post-project or mid-project litigation; whereas a rigid-minded inexpert bean counting auditor might like the notion of omniscience, despite reality. Shaking in the lawyers is, in fact, an admission of failure.
There really is no indication of wrongful collusion to inflate pricing. Met Council dealt at arms length as a reasonable cost adversary to the contractor's hope for maximal profiting. Being aware of public perceptions motivated Met Council to fight to minimize spending, while being adaptive, and not being a dumb penny-pinching counterproductive buyer.
Call that a bottom line point to close the post.