Deane Dana

Tutor-Saliba has been awarded, over two years, $45.8 million in contract increases on the Metro Rail project. None of these increases was ever done through a competitive process. Mayor Tom Bradley himself refers to Tutor as a “change-order artist.”

What does Bradley mean when he says this? And as one who is in the construction business, perhaps I can illuminate a possible explanation.

Most owners, or in this case the Transportation Commission, understand that work that has been added to the scope of a contract will also end up costing more. But what rankles most people is this feeling that they are being taken advantage of. In most change-order situations the contractor knows that the owner will not solicit other bids simply because it would slow down the existing work, and this slowdown invariably has some cost attached to it. This leads to a temptation on the part of the contractor to obtain more for this change-order work than he might get in a competitive-bidding scenario. The remedy for this would be to go out and secure bids on this change-order work. The short-term effect of this policy would be to slow down a job, and increase costs somewhat. I suspect, however, the result in the long run to be substantial savings in this change-order work--savings above and beyond the short-term costs.

PAUL SKOPHAMMER

Malibu