Under fire, Big Dig firm never left

Just weeks after Governor Mitt Romney lambasted Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff this summer for lax oversight of construction of the fatally flawed Interstate 90 tunnel ceiling, his transportation secretary, John Cogliano, approved $8 million in additional money to keep the Big Dig managers' engineers working for the state as consultants, according to Cogliano's spokesman.

Cogliano, brought in by Romney to reform management of the Big Dig project after a July 10 ceiling collapse in the I-90 connector, quickly discovered that Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff engineers were still so involved in the project that a $25 million fund to pay them for ongoing consulting work was nearly empty, according to a state engineer.

Last month, a few days after briefly meeting with two senior executives from Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, Cogliano extended the joint venture's contract, allowing the payment of additional consulting fees, said state officials.

Cogliano said Tuesday that he took responsibility for the hiring of five Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff engineers who oversaw repair of the ceiling that collapsed, killing a Jamaica Plain woman. Cogliano said the hiring decision violated Romney's "clear directive" to keep the Big Dig managers away from the Interstate 90 connector tunnel ceiling where the quality of their work is under investigation by state and federal authorities.

The five engineers were probably paid from the consulting contract, his spokesman, Jon Carlisle, said yesterday. But he defended the extension of the contract after the accident, saying the Big Dig engineers are needed to finish an array of final details on the $14.6 billion project, which includes several tunnels.

"This money was needed to wind down the project, and it was never intended to go to any I-90 tunnel remediation," said Carlisle.

After Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff's role in supervising the tunnel ceiling repairs became public this week, Cogliano ordered the engineers, as well as 12 to 15 consultants, to stop working in the connector tunnel. He said he did not realize they were working there.

Romney's office issued a statement reiterating that Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff should have no role in ceiling repair work in the connector, "no matter how minimal." The assignment of Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff engineers to supervise tunnel repairs, first reported by the Boston Herald, brought widespread condemnation, with many critics wondering how it could have happened.

In fact, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff employees never left the Big Dig, and its consultants continued working in the connector tunnel after the fatal accident. The joint venture's contract to manage the project, for which it was paid more than $2 billion over two decades, ended at the start of this year, but it was then retained as a consultant.

Though the major construction of the Big Dig is finished, numerous construction contracts remain open and about 100 Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff employees are still working on it as consultants who are paid by the hour. Among their tasks are completing final engineering drawings of the project as built, safety work, and road surface details.

After Romney forced the resignation of Turnpike Authority chairman Matthew J. Amorello in August, Cogliano, his successor, realized that if he did nothing, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff's consulting funds would have run out by the end of October.

Cogliano could have turned to another engineering firm for help, but a state engineer who advised Cogliano on the $8 million extension of the consulting contract for Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff said that changing engineers would have made little sense with the Big Dig virtually finished.

"These people who are doing this work have been with the program since day one. They have the institutional knowledge. They know what the work is," said Albert Stegemann, a senior engineering manager from the Massachusetts Highway Department who reviewed the contract for Cogliano. "It made more sense in this particular case to keep continuity."

Cogliano's staff, acting on the advice of Stegemann and others, briefed the Turnpike Authority board of directors on the need for additional money in executive session on Aug. 30, according to Carlisle. The board was not asked to vote on the matter, because Cogliano had authority to approve the additional funding.

But Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff officials didn't take anything for granted amid the lambasting they absorbed over the collapse of a relatively new ceiling.

On Sept. 14, Morris Levy, chairman of the board at Parsons Brinckerhoff, and John MacDonald from Bechtel met with Cogliano in his office to express their concern over the accident and their willingness to continue helping on the Big Dig. Officials for both the companies and the state who were there say the 10-minute meeting was mainly a "meet and greet" session that did not touch on Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff's proposed contract extension, nor on its work in the connector.

Within a few days, Cogliano approved the $8 million in consulting fees, keeping Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff on the job beyond the end of the month, state officials said. Carlisle stressed that the money was intended for consulting on all Big Dig projects and was not supposed to be for overseeing repairs of the ceiling. In fact, Romney had forbidden Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff from participating in the repairs.

But by early October, a turnpike or Highway Department manager had recruited Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff engineers to help supervise repair work carried out by J.F. White and McCourt Construction. Cogliano has said the decision happened without his approval.