For two years the traffic of New York failed to receive and represent more than $ 2 million in surplus and third railway materials from a recently completed rail reconstruction project next to the Harlem de Manhattan river, according to a final audit published by the General Inspector of the Metropolitan Transport Authority.
The report of August 7 found that the Traffic Agency did not take possession of the material from the mitigation and flood resilience of the courtyard on the street 207th after being purchased by its contractor The Walsh Group. Prior to the initial report of the IG’s 2023 on the project, the agency lacked procedures for tracking the material purchased from contractors and controls on how these supplies should be documenting once accepted, according to the audit.
The NYC Construction and Development Unit Transit and MTA in 2020 inherited the reconstruction project arising from the damage to the Hurricane Sandy flood in 2012. But after expensive change orders were executed, agencies did not solve the problem until the IG launched the investigation, according to the report. The IG said that they have since implemented their recommendations, including the implementation of materials, the implementation of monitoring inventories for items bought by contractors and the adoption of surplus materials procedures.
“The MTA must say that the best systems are in their place to keep track of their construction material to prevent unnecessary expenses,” said MTA inspector Daniel Cort in a statement. “I am satisfied that the [agency] He has accepted our recommendations and addressed our proposed changes. “”
The final cost of the project was $ 801 million, said NYC Transit.
Eric Lenkowitz, Deputy General Communication and Public Affairs Inspector, would not say if the lack of procedures for monitoring materials was isolated in the 207th Street Rail Yard project or a systemic problem throughout the agency. “We can only talk about the situation about this report,” he said.
The IG’s office said it will continue to supervise how traffic agencies implement inventory management improvements.
“We appreciate the focus of the IG on accountability and the transparency in this project for more than six years to completely rebuild and protect in 207th Street Yard from the floods after Sandy, the process problems caused a contractor to order that they were not needed, said Kayla Shult, a spokesman for the MTA in a statement. report revealed with help. “
The WalSH group did not respond to the application for ENR comments, but in February it listed the project, which includes a 1,535-Linear-File-File Flood designed to support the floods of a 500-year-old storm, as completed on its website. Located on the Harlem river, the wall consists of 279 piles of 54 in interconnected steel pipes.
“The completion of this project represents an important step forward in the protection of New York City traffic infrastructure of extreme weather events, while ensuring the efficiency and continuous security of railway operations in the 207 street rail courtyard,” wrote the Chicago -based contractor on his website.
Discrepancies
The IG said that NYC Transit and MTA Construction & Development do not agree with the evaluation of signing the highlight of the material. Agencies said that they were later used in the same project, delivered after the initial publication of the report or compensation through financial credits.
But he said that the manipulation of these materials led to important exchange orders to the emergency repair contract, which included general bus deposits, train gardens, signal systems and fans.
After winning the contract in 2018 for an initial amount of $ 383.6 million, the Walsh group acquired much of the long -term material for the project before conducting its own place survey, and found that some of the work had already been completed at home by NYC Transit, including 82% of the 17,875 feet of the replacement of the planned track. New York traffic in July 2020 estimated that the contract should be reduced by $ 18.2 million at direct costs for teams, labor and materials that were no longer needed.
During his survey, Walh also discovered that other damaged infrastructure, including more than 5,000 feet of track with a value of $ 11.5 million at direct costs, should have been included in the contractual field.
“Therefore, NYC Transit was obliged to buy this surplus material from the contractor and also had to add material again for lost and added track work,” the report said.
While the cost of the contract was ultimately reduced by $ 6.7 million, negotiated credits depended on New York traffic, owned the ownership of surplus materials that the contractor had already purchased.
Another order of change was a similar combination of deleted and additional work on the third railway, according to the report, which also said that the justification given to managers to approve the two change orders “mistakenly represented the reasons that needed to be changed and that the records prepared by the project’s construction manager to request [their] The approval portrayed the causes of the root of the changes incorrectly. “
Tylin Group, who is responsible for the construction of the project, did not respond to ENR before the publication of stories.
While the report said that a work from another unnamed company was incorporated into NYC transit internal design for track work, as a package of construction contractor contractors, Lenkowitz said that “the design work that translates into the suppressions and additions of the work of the court was performed at home by NYC Transit”.
