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A Need for Florida Standards--for School Construction
Ohanian Comment: So where are the Federal watchdogs? The list of "Needs Improvement" construction companies and roofers? Where are the, pardon the expression, standards for roof leaks?
Get smart -- the school's roof shouldn't leak
The latest chapter of the school-construction scandal in Miami-Dade centers on the shockingly shabby condition of the newer buildings.
Of 78 schools and additions completed in recent years, all but one of them have leaky roofs, among other defects.
So far, the school district has spent $40 million trying to patch up 36 problem schools that opened since 1995 -- an appalling testament to both the incompetence of the contractors and the flawed process by which they were selected.
Is it that difficult to build a school that doesn't drip all over the students and teachers?
The soggy statistics speak for themselves. Obviously the school district has failed to impress upon engineers, architects and contractors the concept that roofing should be functional, not just decorative.
Meanwhile, school officials are opening hundreds of millions of dollars in new bids to some of the same firms that have botched construction work on other schools.
For that you can thank the Prequalification Committee, which was initiated four years ago ostensibly to weed out bunglers, slackers and recidivists. The seven-member panel includes school officials, a parent and representatives of building-trade organizations.
Some district officials say the Prequalification Committee has done a swell job of banning repeat offenders from getting new school contracts.
Yet in recent months, bidding rights for up to $300 million in new work were opened to four firms that have built some of the county's most trouble-plagued schools: Beauchamp Construction, F.& L. Construction, Magnum Construction Management (MCM), and Soares Da Costa Contractor, managing partner of a joint venture called SBR.
Those companies constructed 27 of the 77 new schools and additions that have been damaged by persistent water leaks. All of the companies previously have forfeited payments on projects for mistakes, delays or quitting before the job was finished.
The Prequalification Committee initially banned two of the firms -- Beauchamp and SBR -- based on past construction problems. The companies appealed, and the committee reversed itself.
Interestingly, SBR had an unpublicized connection to the committee. From 1999 until 2002, the school system paid Miami construction consultant Mariazell Arias more than $500,000 -- a generous sum -- to screen competing companies for the Prequalification Committee.
Arias said that her biggest private client has been Soares Da Costa, and that her own construction company has subcontracted for Soares Da Costa and SBR on school projects.
She said the link ''is totally immaterial and irrelevant'' because she never screened Soares Da Costa, only its competitors. Now a full member of the Prequalification Committee, Arias said she will not vote on Soares Da Costa but will vote on other firms.
The conflict, which would seem more evident to SBR's competitors, is lost on Arias.
SBR has so far not offered to fix the leaks in the schools upon which it worked. The three other firms have said that they would make the necessary repairs on their previous projects, school officials say.
A few School Board members say that the district has been steadily cracking down on shoddy construction, and that the screening process has eliminated approximately 15 companies from ever working in the school system.
One can only imagine how monumentally inept a firm must be to make the district's blacklist, given the track record of some of the companies that have won approval.
Contractors have rightly pointed out that the school system itself has contributed to construction fiascos by assigning inexperienced architects to projects, or ordering expensive, last-minute design changes.
Still, the infuriating fact remains that taxpayers are shelling out millions to fix the most basic and necessary infrastructure -- walls, plumbing, electricity, roofs -- in relatively new school buildings.
Maintenance crews have spent a boggling 708,000 man-hours on those 36 problem schools that have opened since 1995. More than a third of that labor was required before the facilities were two years old -- and in some cases, even before the school opened its doors.
A dry education isn't too much to ask for. Somewhere in South Florida are skilled and reliable contractors who know how to put on a roof that doesn't leak.
This isn't some great enigma of engineering; we hominids have been successfully sheltering ourselves from the rain for about four million years.
That so much of the sloppy construction occurred after Hurricane Andrew proves that many school contractors failed to learn the simplest of lessons.
Back then, we had the roofers from hell.
Today it's the roofers from duh.
— Carl Hiaasen
Get smart--the roof shouldn't leak
Miami Herald
June 29, 2003
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/carl_hiaasen/6187815.htm
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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