Errors Add $2 Million to O.C. Facility

Orange County was forced to spend more than $2 million to cover mistakes by the builder of a coroner’s training facility in Santa Ana, a grand jury said in a report released Tuesday.

During construction, more than 41 change orders were made, slowing work and forcing the county to lease a vacant restaurant for more than a year as a temporary, cramped home for the coroner’s operation.

Construction for the 52,600-square-foot coroner’s facility under Carter & Burgess Inc. of Fort Worth was supposed to cost $12 million, but overruns and the monthly $8,400 rent on the restaurant site drove expenses higher. The old restaurant, the report said, “was not an ideal building.”

Overruns and change orders cost the county $2,055,690, the report said.

While the Texas company and the Orange County sheriff-coroner’s office are trying to negotiate a settlement, the grand jury urged the sheriff to take immediate steps to recoup expenses. A jury spokesman said the grand jury decided to bring the overruns to light, given the county and state’s budget crises.

“We think it’s helpful to stay within the cost limits for a project,” said Tom W. Staple, grand jury foreman. “It’s certainly something of interest for all taxpayers to have cost control.”

In recent months, the county has called for a hiring freeze and anticipates a budget cut that could reach $40 million, which could mean deep cuts in service. One supervisor has even proposed selling John Wayne Airport.

Anthony W. Loyd, a Carter & Burgess senior vice president, said the company inherited the issue when it acquired Coleman/Caskey Architects Inc., a Costa Mesa company that was the principal designer for the training facility.

Among other things, the grand jury urged that in future projects, the sheriff exercise better cost control. Examples that the jury cited included better documentation on delays and documentation done on a daily, rather than weekly, basis.

Payment for some contractors also was scrutinized by the jury. In one case, the jury said, payment was withheld from a contractor even though the work was properly performed. In another instance, another contractor was reimbursed at a rate of $1,660 a day for 122 days for finishing work earlier -- even though there was no need for the work to be expedited.

“The basis of these payments was found to be very subjective and could not be audited to verify the contractor’s actual costs,” the report stated.

During construction, the sheriff’s team issued a monthly “printed and bound” progress report to the county Board of Supervisors. Complete with color photographs, the reports included change orders but according to the grand jury’s report lacked details on construction problems, and “reasons for the cost increases were not provided.”

According to the grand jury report, most problems were due to the failure of the architect and engineers to coordinate construction plans. In some examples, the architect “failed to supply the contractors with a revised set of plans that changed critical layouts.”

Just the same, the company received a design award for the two-story, steel-framed building. Construction began September 2001 and was finished this past January, more than a year behind schedule.

The facility is where autopsies and death investigations using advanced equipment are conducted. The facility also provides education and training for professionals involved in death investigations statewide.

According to a sheriff’s spokesman, Carter & Burgess “has readily admitted” that the company was responsible for the construction errors.

“The point I want to make is that there were errors and omission in the plans given us by the architect,” said Jon Fleischman, a sheriff’s spokesman. “We started to build the project, and it cost us money to fix the errors.”

Fleischman said the Sheriff’s Department had begun talks with the company, “so the taxpayers will not bear the burden of these costs that were the result of error by a private firm.”

The sheriff-coroner did make one major change: an additional external power supply unit that cost $150,000. “That was a legitimate expense,” Fleischman said.