Beavs at dawgs, series thread

Your memory serves you incorrectly. Yaquina River or Granite Coco just did a shit job; over budget, late and had to be redone almost wholly, including the half-ass slide remediation they “installed” and then found didn’t work a year after they were supposed to be done… but were not.

So two years of the private contractor squabbling about how everything shitty was not their fault for one reason or another, ODOT just told them to go to hell. We got $15m back from them, and the Feds fined them $1m because they were just dicks about it all.

It’s not a PPP at its finest. That would have resulted in a toll road instead. But it is what happens when you turn over rote government systems to a for-profit entity.

Safety and shipping were the reasons, not 10 minutes.

Are you wanting me to name Parsons Brinckerhoff or Cornforth? There was another done for Kiewit around that time, as well as three done by YRC themselves and one done by URS… with about a half dozen supplementals.

All of those were sourced by CCI in prep. All of them can be found or requested as public records, as can the CCI report.

But let’s get back to the idea that some official placed their son-in-law in some completely undeserving appointment where he decided it was better for local concrete vendors to build bridges… where building on grade would be fine… or something like that. I can see nepotism leading to cronyism. I don’t know where you get the idea that easily found reports were not available to all and formed into clear data over the years.

Yes… because it happens on each and every project.

Right?

It happens all the time, therefore it’s always a wash. Instances where the contractor cuts corners are 50% the fault of the oversight entity.

What you’re essentially saying is that other people make you feel 50% of what you feel. And now that I look down the page, it looks like you act that way as well.

So… what does that have to do with anything? I’m fully aware of how these projects work, specifically with quake and slide remediation. I know precisely what cutting corners looks like. ODOT cuts corners financially in the long term sometimes because of short term cost, sometimes because the tech is unproven. They do not give their subs improper data then hide behind legalese that would cost as much as the project to date to litigate.

But even that’s not the point. In a perfect world, GVA would have just paid us back for 80% and apologized. And we would use them again in the future as we did in the past and do now anyway. These builds occur all the time, butt they are not this conflicted. I would say almost 70% are actually run very well. The problem I have is that the GC gets to skate when the GC is in the wrong on major fuck-ups like this. My gripe is not that they are inherently evil or anything. That’s the parrot language of your world.

I’m sorry you won’t be able to pay your suppliers if you pay us back what you should. But the one bad apple theory shouldn’t get a 50% subsidy from the taxpayers. It shouldn’t hurt too much since you are your suppliers.

As a side, I know many people who work for ODOT who think as you do. When I prod them about why they feel this way, there are some valid issues brought up. But for the most part their anti-ODOT whine is something they themselves don’t believe, because it would mean they themselves immensely suck at their jobs. Those who actually do suck whine louder than anyone, and I’ve seen them do a couple really really inefficient things… for their future employers.

Do you know where your armada is?

I’m not sure why you’re making more of this than needs be made. If you want the state to cover your contingency on an underbid airport build, you build the tarmac last.

Granite double-dips a lot. And they do so with the same patterns. I’ve dealt with them five times in three different states, and two of those times were shady or wrong (magically unintentional, of course) on their part. I’ve transitioned since that time, so it would be disingenuous to say I would never work with them again. But that is true, nonetheless.

And why pick on ODOT? They are one of the few DOTs who actually work quite well given their resources. I think only Florida, Georgia and Alabama spend less then does Oregon per registered vehicle. I’ve not dealt with the other two, but I can tell you ODOT puts FDOT to shame.