Airport Costs, Delays Soaring : County Should Have Let Original Contractor Finish The Project

What else can go wrong with the John Wayne Airport expansion project? County officials are so weary of the delays and other problems associated with it that they seem willing to do almost anything to get the project completed on schedule.

For example, somebody discovered a few weeks ago that marble trim needed for the terminal was missing, so the hassled contractor decided to rush it from West Germany by air freight. Guess who could end up paying the shipping cost: the county.

Then there was the expensive, $1.6-million limit the county hastily approved to complete the new parking garage and road. Without competitive bidding, the contracts were given to the Irvine-based McCarthy Brothers construction company. That was after the county fired the expansion’s principal contractor, Taylor Woodrow Construction California Ltd., from the $25-million garage and road contracts.

The county was, understandably, miffed at the lack of progress on those projects. But the amount just agreed to is four times what Taylor Woodrow had said the project would take to complete when it wrote to express interest in resuming the projects and doing the work within four weeks. Its estimate: between $254,000 and $440,000.

Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, aware of the disparity between the two figures, said that if Taylor Woodrow could complete the project, it ought to have finished the work the first time around.

Good point.

But at that price difference, the county might have done well to give the firm a chance to redeem itself with an attractive and economical promise--especially if it had it backed its work with a performance bond.

The county now must rely on its confidence in the new firm to ensure completion of the garage and road project on time. But like the decision to fly in marble, it seems to be a matter of cutting corners.