Officials Find Fault With Airport Project Overseer

With costly delays and construction woes plaguing the $310-million John Wayne Airport expansion, county officials and others are questioning the job of a little-known firm being paid $23 million to oversee the work.

Several officials say the firm failed to accomplish its primary task--to keep the project on time and within budget. And controversial airport contractor Taylor Woodrow Construction California Ltd. blames it for an array of simmering problems.

But the firm--known as HPV--defends its job and draws praise from county airport staffers.

“HPV’s charge is to stay on top of what is going on out there and coordinate everyone’s schedules,” said Jan Mittermeier, deputy airport manager. “They have done that very well. I think they have done a remarkable job under trying circumstances.”

Members of the Board of Supervisors generally support HPV, but several say they wish the firm had told them of problems earlier.

“Early on, I vaguely recall that there appeared to be some confusing lines of authority which took some time to sort out,” said Supervisor Roger R. Stanton.

“The lines of communication may not have been clearly drawn out,” agreed Supervisor Thomas F. Riley.

Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez said he was shocked to learn that HPV was not attending meetings between Taylor Woodrow and its subcontractors, which number more than 30.

“The airport staff did raise red flags to some extent,” Vasquez said, “but then the first flag I saw was when the first opening date (of April 1) was missed.”

With county officials dominating a recent flurry of debate over the airport--now expected to open Sept. 16, five months late and as much as $26 million over budget--Taylor Woodrow has received most of the criticism. Supervisors voted three weeks ago to strip the contractor of a $25-million airport parking garage and road contract but for the time being left intact its $60-million terminal contract.

Taylor Woodrow executives responded by criticizing HPV and filing a lawsuit charging the county with breach of contract.

But this may only be the opening round of legal fighting. By the time the airport actually opens, most observers predict, the whole project will end up in court.

“It’s not unusual for a contractor and a client to have bitter fights during a major public works project such as this,” said Cecil Hoyt, a structural engineer at Colorado-based Kellogg Corp. “But I’ve never seen as much.”

Without suggesting that HPV bears any responsibility for Taylor Woodrow’s troubles, Robert Cashman, a member of the county’s appointed Airport Commission, said he would give the management firm “a grade of only C-plus because I think we should have been advised of what was going on much sooner, so that we could have acted more quickly.

”. . . It’s kind of hard to understand why it was at a crisis level recently, when only four weeks before the crisis developed, HPV was telling us that the project was on schedule.”

HPV’s John McCarney concedes that his firm, a partnership of three independent companies, is now feeling some heat.

“Project director and professional scapegoat,” he quipped recently, when asked his official title.

“I guess we will be the fall guy,” said HPV executive Randy Smith. “But that’s part of what you take on when you sign up for one of these projects.”

The airport job was riddled with problems from its beginning in 1986.

Originally priced at about $40 million, the terminal bids came in markedly higher. Taylor Woodrow’s winning bid was $59.7 million.

That left HPV with the difficult task of trying to whittle down the cost. But HPV internal memos show that there were pointed differences within its own ranks.

Richard Begley, then-HPV project director, often directed one of his top assistants, Robert Bowman, to tone down memos critical of airport architect Leason Pomeroy & Associates, which was ultimately fined $775,000 for turning in late and inaccurate blueprints.

Bowman went public with the dispute after he left HPV, charging that Begley had deliberately under-reported problems to the county.

Begley, who had hired Bowman, counters that there was no attempt by HPV to cover up problems.

“Bob really wanted to take charge of the work and do it himself and simply could not let the Leason Pomeroy firm do its job,” he said.

Begley and his crew recorded some victories as they found ways to shave millions of dollars off the expansion program. For example, the first of several terminal parking garages, finished last year and now in service, came in under budget.

But the successes have been overshadowed by the problems with Taylor Woodrow. At the terminal in particular, Taylor Woodrow claims savings that resulted from trimmed frills--such as seamless glass and a fancy roof--have evaporated over time. Taylor Woodrow blames it on increased construction costs and delays beyond its control, but the county and HPV disagree.

Early in the project, county records show, Taylor Woodrow failed to order steel for the terminal building for two months even though HPV had authorized it.

Subcontractors were frazzled, complaining that Taylor Woodrow was not paying them on time and was ordering design changes without corrected blueprints--only to have to change again when HPV or county officials countermanded the instructions.

Some subcontractors were fired. Others said the delays and disputes were simply too much to bear so they walked off the project in disgust.

A few subcontractors complained that they got no support from HPV.

Ed Shanazarian, whose Structural Beton firm worked on the project and ended up suing Taylor Woodrow for nonpayment, says he tried to warn HPV several times that design drawings were incorrect.

“They wouldn’t even talk to me about it,” Shanazarian recalled recently. “I wrote letters. I copied them to the county and to Taylor Woodrow. But I couldn’t even get an appointment with HPV. They would not see me.”

Shanazarian charges that HPV was negligent in not supervising Taylor Woodrow more aggressively.

But HPV officials counter that such problems should have been handled by Taylor Woodrow.

“It was precisely because we and the county did put pressure on them (Taylor Woodrow) that they are now current (in payments to) all the subs,” Begley said.

Caught in the cross-fire between subcontractors and Taylor Woodrow, HPV began firing off blistering memos and letters criticizing the prime contractor. And Taylor Woodrow executives fired back.

The correspondence is laced with invective, airport records show, and at one point HPV officials went so far as to accuse Taylor Woodrow of “gross negligence” for continuing to work on a defective concrete slab in violation of a stop-work notice.

But airport files also contain memos from Taylor Woodrow seeking answers to technical questions or emergencies--sometimes critical to keeping subcontractors in place--only get no response from HPV for several weeks.

Two weeks ago, as the county prepared to strip Taylor Woodrow of the parking garage contract, the contractor hired an engineering firm--Kellogg Corp.--to independently critique its performance. Kellogg engineers ended up generally pointing fingers at HPV.

“HPV has not provided adequate coordination and direction to the various contractors working on the various and concurrent project work activities,” the Kellogg report says.

The report mentions one instance, for example, in which HPV took months to respond to a Taylor Woodrow request for design information.

HPV officials acknowledge that they have been slow to act on some Taylor Woodrow requests, but they also blame the contractor for not supplying necessary data.

When Taylor Woodrow recently gave supervisors the Kellogg report in a last-ditch effort to keep the parking garage and roadway contract, however, the review was dismissed as meaningless.

“What do you expect them to say?” Supervisor Stanton asked. “Look who hired them.”

HPV officials say some of their critics may have had false expectations about the degree of control the firm has had over the massive airport project, especially since county officials--not HPV--were legally required to deal with problems affecting project schedules and costs.

“I think in some instances, HPV has not performed as well as they should have,” said Hoyt, of Kellogg Corp. But the consultant agrees that “the relationship between HPV and Taylor Woodrow seemed to get off on the wrong foot.”

Even with the airport project now apparently nearing the finish line, tensions between Taylor Woodrow, HPV and the county continue to run high--so much so that when a county airport official paused last month to watch a tile worker lay pieces of marble flooring in the terminal, a Taylor Woodrow executive appeared at his side within seconds, according to one observer.

“What are you going to do today,” the executive snapped, “that we can sue you for?”

HPV: THE $23-MILLION MANAGER

While county officals mostly praise HPV, hired to keep the John Wayne Airport expansion on time and on budget, prime contractor Taylor Woodrow Construction says the managers have only themselves to blame for problems. HPV--a partnership of three firms--is being paid $23 million, even though the terminal is five months behind schedule and $26 million over budget.

THE PARTNERS IN HPV

Homes & Narver Inc.

Location: Orange

Employees: About 7,000

Designs airfields and support facilities such as the blimp hangers now used for helicopters at the Tustin Marine Corps Helicopter Air Station.

The Ralph M. Parsons Co.

Location: Pasadena

Employees: About 7,000

Constructs facilities at airports such as Los Angeles International, Honolulu International and King Abdulaziz International in Saudi Arabia.

Van Del and Associates Inc.

Location: Irvine

Employees: About 80

Engineers transportation systems and developments such as Crystal Court mall in Costa Mesa and the Woodbridge Village district in Irvine.