Contractor Is Rebuked Again by Officials

Los Angeles building inspectors have shut down work at a park-and-ride construction site in the San Fernando Valley for the second time in six months, citing a new defect that engineers said threatened the facility’s structural integrity.

The problem is the latest in a string of construction deficiencies uncovered by city inspectors at a five-story parking garage being built by Tutor-Saliba Corp. at the Van Nuys FlyAway. The most recent disclosure involves numerous steel “stirrups,” which are meant to ensure that concrete beams supporting the structure do not fail under pressure.

Some stirrups failed tests conducted last month by the city’s Bureau of Standards, records show. The failure came even after a subcontractor to Tutor-Saliba assured inspectors that some of the material met strength requirements. Poor test results led inspectors to virtually shut down work at the parking structure April 23.

On Friday, the city’s airport department took legal action against Tutor-Saliba, citing defective welds in the stirrups in some parts of the garage.

In a three-page letter, officials gave the firm, which is based in Sylmar, 15 days to present a plan to address the deficient welds and to provide a realistic schedule for when the parking structure and a terminal building at the site would be finished. The $34-million project, due to be completed in stages this year, is months behind schedule.

Tutor-Saliba “has constructed a parking structure which currently does not satisfy the requirements of the contract,” Kim Day, interim executive director of the Los Angeles airport agency, wrote to Ronald N. Tutor, the company’s president. The structure as built “creates significant public safety issues,” she wrote.

Day’s letter warns that airport officials will file a letter of default, the first step toward removing a contractor from a project, if Tutor doesn’t meet the city’s requirements. This is the second time this spring that Day has threatened such action. She has said that removing Tutor from the project would be her “last resort” because it would probably delay the project further.

Tutor said in an interview Thursday that his firm, which is one of the largest public works companies in the state, was “doing everything physically possible” to address issues at the construction site.

“We’re cleaning up the job and getting it right,” he said.

The dispute over its work at the Van Nuys FlyAway presents a significant challenge for the company. In 2001, a Superior Court jury ordered Tutor-Saliba to pay the Metropolitan Transportation Authority $29.5 million for submitting false claims while building parts of the Metro Rail Red Line subway.

The company is appealing the award and has been trying to reestablish a positive track record with the city.

That effort has been jeopardized by problems with the FlyAway project. Since it started work at the site a year ago, Tutor has received about 215 citations from Los Angeles building inspectors to fix problems at the site, records show. Inspectors typically issue 10 such notices on a project of this size, officials have said.

In November, city building inspectors shut down work at the garage after they found that concrete columns on the parking structures were not aligned properly, reports written by the construction manager show. At that time, inspectors also found that concrete in several columns in the garage, as well as on parts of the flooring and a ramp, was substandard, records show.

Airport officials took legal action against Tutor on March 10, when they sent the firm a four-page letter demanding that it fix a range of problems in 15 days or face further action.

Officials backed away from a threat in that letter to remove Tutor from the project after Ronald Tutor vowed at an Airport Commission meeting April 5 to fix problems at the site within 30 days. That 30-day period ended Wednesday.

In her letter Friday, Day said that Tutor had corrected some problems at the site, including providing concrete that met strength tests and limiting the use of unapproved materials.

The city’s airport agency considers the expanded Van Nuys FlyAway a prototype for future park-and-rides in the region. About 732,921 people parked at the 29-year-old facility last year and boarded buses for Los Angeles International Airport.

But the new facility will not open on time, officials said, because of a number of remaining defects that Tutor must fix. The requirements include replacing 20% of a concrete ramp that connects the ground and second floors and reinforcing a concrete column to shore up about 50 square feet of the second floor where concrete is weakened.