Contractor Blames Transit Officials for Soil Sinkage : Subway: Head of tunneling firm says MTA failed to require grouting that might have stabilized the ground in Hollywood. Agency chief White declines comment.

Under attack for problems in the construction of subway tunnels along Hollywood Boulevard, the president of the firm responsible for the work is blaming transit officials for their failure to require more extensive grouting.

Company President John F. Shea, in a letter this week to board members of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said that project officials “consciously” decided not to require grouting that might have stabilized the soil.

Shea also contended that the failure of wooden wedges used for bracing of the initial tunnel shell did not cause but resulted from the ground sinkages of up to nine inches in Hollywood. Earlier engineering analyses concluded that the failure of the wedges contributed to the sinkages.

Shea’s letter marks the first time that the contractor has publicly defended the tunneling work, performed by a joint venture of his and two other companies.

His letter also comes as MTA Chief Executive Officer Franklin E. White says that he is considering terminating the contracts of both the tunneling contractor and the transit authority’s inspection-management firm, Parsons-Dillingham.

Representatives of Parsons-Dillingham have alleged that the tunneling contractor deliberately concealed deficient work from inspectors. They said the work involved the placement of improper filler material--instead of required high-strength concrete--around the wood bracing.

Citing the tunneling in Hollywood and earlier problems, the Clinton Administration on Oct. 5 announced a suspension of $1.6 billion in future federal funding for subway expansion. The funding will be unfrozen, federal officials said, when the MTA demonstrates that it can competently manage subway construction. The tunneling has been shut down since Aug. 18.

Shea, citing provisions of the firm’s tunneling contract, has declined to discuss any of the work with the news media.

White, asked Wednesday about Shea’s letter, declined to comment.

At issue in the growing disagreements over responsibility for the sinkage is who--contractors, taxpayers or both--will pay for tunnel repairs and damage claims from property owners. The total costs are not yet known, but are expected to climb to at least the tens of millions of dollars.

Shea, in his letter, cited two types of grouting that he said were not required by transit officials:

One kind is called compaction grouting, whereby a cement-based material is injected from street level. The material, of peanut-butter consistency, has been used to stabilize soil under which a tunnel-boring machine has passed or is about to pass.

The second procedure referred to by Shea in his letter is hemical grouting, the injection of watery grout through pipes from within the tunnel into soil ahead of the boring machine. It is designed to coagulate fine soils that otherwise might pour into a tunnel.

Both types of grouting add to the tunneling cost because of the labor and materials involved.

Not mentioned in Shea’s letter was another procedure intended to prevent ground settlement, called contact grouting. This calls for pumping cement-based grout from within the tunnel to eliminate air voids between the structure’s concrete segments and the surrounding earth.

The Times reported on Sept. 11 that MTA officials did not enforce a contract specification requiring the joint venture of Shea-Kiewit-Kenny to perform contact grouting along Vermont Avenue and part of Hollywood Boulevard. Inspection reports show that even after the MTA began enforcing the specification, the contractor did not contact grout more than 340 linear feet of tunnel in the area where the ground sinkages are now apparent.

Said Shea, in his letter:

“The decision to exclude compaction and/or chemical grouting in this critical area on Hollywood Boulevard was consciously made by the” MTA and its design-engineering and inspection-management consultants.

“These procedures are normally specified in urban tunneling to mitigate damage to property,” he said.

To buttress his position, Shea attached to his letter a page from a soils report circulated by the transit agency in 1991 to prospective bidders. The document advised contractors:

“While chemical grout could be used to control settlement, it would be very expensive and probably not worth the expense relative to the cost of any repairs” to damage inflicted on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Transit officials have said that they, in consultation with the contractors, considered and rejected performing compaction or chemical grouting as of late July, when they found that Hollywood Boulevard already had sunk by four inches. The officials allowed more tunneling in the area, and the boulevard sank an additional five inches.

Responding to questions posed by The Times, the head of the MTA’s design engineering group, Parsons Brinckerhoff Chairman Martin Rubin, gave this explanation last month:

“In late July and early August, sections of Hollywood Boulevard had settled beyond that which was anticipated. Compaction, chemical . . . and other forms of grouting were considered by the MTA, its consultants and contractors. . . . It was determined that grouting would not significantly reduce settlements.”

Rubin did not specify whether the “contractors” he referred to included Shea-Kiewit-Kenny and he could not be reached for elaboration. John Adams, the MTA’s interim director of rail construction, said he could not comment.