Choice of an airport construction team is delayed

2nd June 2014   ·   0 Comments

By Susan Buchanan
Contributing Writer

The New Orleans Aviation Board last Tuesday was ready to name the Parsons-Odebrecht Joint Venture the builder of Louis Armstrong Airport’s new North Terminal when the Hunt Gibbs Boh Metro consortium filed a protest saying the selection committee’s scoring was unfair. At issue are the committee’s rankings of the two groups last month on costs and participation by disadvantaged business enterprises or DBEs. A related hearing will be held on or before June 9, airport spokeswoman Michelle Wilcut said Wednesday.

Pre-construction on the North Terminal should start this year, with building to be done by 2018, when the city celebrates its tricentennial. Federal and state aviation grants, airport revenue bonds and funds generated by the facility will pay for the project. The City of New Orleans won’t need to open its coffers.

The two finalist groups are vying for an airport Construction Man­age­ment at Risk or CMAR contract. Hunt Gibbs Boh Metro links Hunt Construction Group of Ind­iana­polis with three New Orleans firms — Gibbs Construc­tion, Boh Brothers Construction and Metro Service Group, Inc.

The Parsons-Odebrecht Joint Venture combines California-bas­ed Parsons Construction with Odebrecht USA — the Florida unit of a Brazilian conglomerate. They’re partnered with local firms Woodward Design+Build; Vali Cooper International; Royal Engi­neers & Con­sul­tants; ILSI Eng­ineering, Nol­mar Corporation; The Hale Group and GOTECH Inc.

On May 14, an 11-member selection committee scor­ed the construction proposals of the Parsons-Odebrecht Joint Ven­ture against Hunt Gibbs Boh Metro equally, at 999 points each out of a possible 1,100. To break the tie, both groups were interviewed by the committee in a May 22 meeting. After another round of scoring, Hunt Gibbs Boh Metro’s rating dropped to 956 points while Parsons-Odebrecht’s rose to 1,002.

In the protest filed at the May 27 selection committee meeting, the Hunt-Gibbs group said scoring on two elements—project costs and expected participation by DBEs—was unfair. The protest letter was signed by New Orleans attorney Daniel Lund III of Coats Rose.

On May 14, anomalies occurred in scoring costs. “Two of the members of the review committee, Laverne McSwain and Judith Kinnard, each gave the two proposers the full complement of 10 points related to cost, though the separate proposals on cost were not identical,” the letter said. Based on its higher projected costs, Parsons Odebrecht should have received fewer points, according to the Hunt-Gibbs group. Laverne McSwain is a North Terminal project manager, and Judith Kinnard is a Tulane University architecture professor.

“Hunt Gibbs Boh Metro’s CMAR general requirements, conditions and fees are $14 million lower, or 30 percent less than those of Parson Odebrecht’s,” Hunt Construction Group vice president Matthew Barnes said last week.

According to the protest letter, if scoring on costs had been objective, Hunt Gibbs Boh Metro would have won the first round. “Had either Ms. McSwain or Ms. Kinnard properly scored the cost component in the original evaluation on May 14, correctly awarding more points to Hunt Gibbs Boh Metro than to Parsons Odebrecht in that category, there would not have been a deadlocked tie on May 14,” the letter said. The Hunt Gibbs group would have been victorious, it said.

Hunt Gibbs Boh Metro also contends it was unfairly scored on May 14 because of a misunderstanding over the DBE status of Metro Service Group. In a re-branding, Metro Disposal Inc. was renamed Metro Service Group on January 2013, according to that company.

Last May 14, Hunt Gibbs Boh Metro earned a total of 72 points in the DBE category from members of the selection committee, while Parsons Odebrecht chalked up105 points.

The committee was influenced by a May 8 report from the airport’s DBE Liaison Office erroneously stating that Metro Service Group was a State-Local DBE, but not a fully qualified DBE under the proposal for the terminal’s construction—which will receive federal and state funds. Metro was said to lack a Louisiana Unified Certification Program for DBE’s designation, which can be applied to companies receiving federal transportation funding for projects in the state.

In 2012 and before its name change, Metro Disposal was recognized by the airport’s DBE Liaison Office as eligible for all DBE programs administered by the City of New Orleans, including federally funded projects, during a period to Dec. 15, 2014, according to Metro Service Group.

“Metro was always qualified for the LAUCP DBE,” the May 27 protest letter said. And just before the letter was penned, Metro got written confirmation of its certification from the state’s Dept of Transportation and Development.

“When the review committee re-convened on May 22 for the second set of deliberations, Hunt Gibbs Boh Metro provided a May 21, 2014, written LAUCP DBE certification from the LADOTD, entailing that Metro met the criteria” for all DBE work, the protest letter said.

The letter also said that since the project’s pre-construction phase, when Metro would be particularly active, doesn’t require federal funding, the state and local DBE—or SLDBE certification—held all along by Metro, was sufficient for its DBE project participation. Committee members shouldn’t have deducted points for Hunt Gibbs Boh Metro in the DBE category, the letter said.

On May 22, Andrew Kopplin, the committee’s chairman and the city’s chief administrative officer, said the Hunt Gibbs Boh Metro proposal met all DBE criteria in the city’s Request for Proposals.

Metro Service Group is characterized in the Hunt Gibbs Boh Metro construction proposal as a minority-owned small business that is SLDBE and LAUCP certified. Its specialties are listed as “construction management, environmental, waste and recycle management.” Metro has done demolition and debris removal for the city and, for example, participated in the Iberville housing teardown. The company also works for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Navy in Belle Chasse.

As for the scoring system, it raises concerns about individual biases and judgment. “The NAACP’s stance on the public bidding process is that the laws that apply need to be enforced so that we have objectivity, so subjectivity is taken out of the process,” attorney Danatus King, president of the New Orleans branch of the NAACP, said last week. “And proposals must be responsive to the Request for Proposals. Otherwise, what’s the use of having rules?” he asked.

RFPs can run into trouble over DBE requirements, King said, citing problems in efforts to redevelop the former World Trade Center. Though he didn’t say so, an initial proposal to redo the WTC by Gatehouse Capital didn’t specify DBE partners. In April, the city ended negotiations with Gatehouse but gave a different reason, saying the company’s offer didn’t provide decent returns to New Orleans Building Corp.

How much DBE work will the North Terminal construction project generate? “Directions in the RFP issued by the airport request that participation from DBEs be 36.49 percent,” Christine Rigamer of Gambel Communications in Metairie said, speaking on behalf of Parsons Odebrecht last week. “The RFP didn’t detail specific state or federal DBE requirements in percentages.”

In a statement last week, the Parsons-Odebrecht team said it received copies of the committee’s scorecards Tuesday and five days after the Hunt Gibbs group did. “The other team prides itself on its commitment to New Orleans,” Parsons-Odebrecht also said. “We have had offices here for the past nine years,” generating more than 400 local jobs. Additionally, Parsons-Odebrecht said it has worked on 476 airports worldwide. “We have delivered billions of dollars of airports as a construction manager at risk,” the group said.

As for the North Terminal’s design squad, it was chosen last year and includes architect Cesar Pelli of Pelli Clarke Pelli in Connecticut; New Orleans-based Manning Architects and the Crescent City Aviation Team; and Leo A. Daly/Atkins in Nebraska.

Over the course of two days last week, the airport’s DBE Liaison Office didn’t respond to an inquiry about Louis Armstrong’s current compliance with DBE rules.

This article originally published in the June 2, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.