Early FasTracks spending appears behind schedule

Only small amount of consulting funds has been doled out

Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News

Monday, May 7, 2007

An army of private contractors and consultants is busily at work on FasTracks, earning more than $23 million so far - a down payment on outside services that will exceed a half-billion dollars.

But that $23 million actually should have been higher by now, a reflection of how the ambitious rapid-transit expansion project is lagging.

Engineers, planners, architects, appraisers and a host of others are swelling the ranks of the $4.7 billion project. They represent 94 firms from the Denver area and around the country.

Some have key personnel working full time in FasTracks offices, but most others are on retainer, called in periodically and paid on an as-needed basis.

FasTracks is the voter-approved 12-year project that will add 119 miles of new rail service to the metro area and expand bus routes.

Through March, RTD has spent $23.3 million in the past two years on consultants who are doing the required studies, planning, designing, engineering and other tasks.

But the total appears to be behind the pace needed to stay on schedule.

RTD has budgeted $556.4 million for consulting services over the life of the project. The total spent so far is only 4.2 percent of that amount after 17 percent of the project's time frame has elapsed.

In the case of the West Corridor, RTD had expected to spend $18 million by now on the final design of the 12.1-mile line from downtown to Golden.

But through March, the prime consultant, David Evans & Associates, had been paid $3.36 million.

Nevertheless, FasTracks managers expect all of the work to accelerate this year and vow to meet the deadline for completing all of the lines by 2017.

Shift to consultants

The cost of consultants makes up nearly 12 percent of FasTracks' overall $4.7 billion budget.

It's not unusual to have so much work for a government project done by the private sector. The alternative would be hiring all of the needed personnel, greatly enlarging RTD's staff.

Consultants, on the other hand, work on specific tasks and then are let go, which keeps the agency becoming bloated.

"This is really the way mega- projects work," said Pauletta Tonilas, FasTracks spokeswoman. "For as many people as we'd have to hire onto RTD staff to do this, there's just no way."

Analysts agree.

"There has certainly been a shift in general toward outside contractors doing what we've traditionally seen as government work," said John Donahue of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

The downside to a government agency managing a big project by itself, Donahue said, is the prospect of creating a giant bureaucracy that uses its size and scope to justify continual projects.

"The Army Corps of Engineers is a very efficient and effective organization," he said. "But once you have it set up, you're geared up to build a dam, and all you can do after that's done is build the next dam and the next dam after that."

So in the downtown office building that houses the growing team to manage FasTracks, RTD employees mix seamlessly with the consultants and contractors.

In fact, among the array of consultants is one who is called in from time to time to help other consultants and RTD employees work as a team.

In consultant-speak, it's called partnering.

Revolving door

RTD has hired out all manner of tasks for FasTracks.

It has a consulting company to manage every document, hard copy and digital, generated by the projects.

It hired a firm to develop a program to measure and analyze the impact of FasTracks on the quality of life in the metro area.

It has noise and vibration experts on call.

Real estate appraisers and surveyors.

Cost estimators.

Firms that supply support services such as video, photography and printing.

Caterers to provide finger food and bottled water for meetings hosted by the public involvement team, which includes numerous small firms that ensure each FasTracks project is adequately explained to the communities it will serve.

Late last month, for example, the firm GBSM arranged two evening meetings in Arvada and northwest Denver to discuss the Gold Line Corridor from downtown Denver to Arvada and Wheat Ridge.

Andy Mountain supervised the meetings, keeping them moving, calling on the consultants to explain their jargon and making sure questions were fully addressed.

The citizens' reactions at such meetings are recorded and become part of the decision-making process.

Some of the consultants are former government employees, and vice versa, a reflection of what's often called the "revolving door."

It can raise questions about potential conflicts of interest, such as where does the loyalty fall when consultants are hired by agencies they used to work for?

Or does a consulting firm have an edge on a bid if a key employee once worked for the agency awarding a contract?

In the view of Donahue of the Kennedy School, the revolving- door phenomenon is often more a perception of a problem than a real one.

With higher pay in the private sector, the door most often revolves one way - from government service to private firms.

"It doesn't necessarily raise a conflict," Donahue said.

"This is something where you do want vigilance from the press and other watchdogs, but there shouldn't be a presumption of a conflict of interest."

In fact, the situation is often advantageous.

"It can be a very good thing to have the expertise come in that way," according to Donahue.

"It's also a big problem for government to attract people with the technical expertise it often needs. If you crank up the conflict-of-interest rules too strict, it can prevent you from hiring the people you need."

Larry Warner worked for the Colorado Department of Transportation for 28 years as an engineer. He retired last year as manager of the successful $1.75 billion T-REX project along Interstate 25, which combined highway and transit expansion.

He went to work for Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas, which is a subcontractor to FasTracks' lead program management consultant, Carter & Burgess - which was the lead consultant on T-REX.

Warner is assigned by his firm to oversee the FasTracks Interstate 225 corridor - essentially a light-rail extension of T-REX from Parker Road up to Interstate 70.

There are exceptions to the one-way revolving door.

Liz Telford is an RTD employee in charge of FasTracks' environmental planning as well as the project manager for the Gold Line Corridor.

Back in the 1990s, Telford worked at RTD but was recruited by CH2M Hill, the Douglas County-based construction and engineering company. She was there for six years before bucking the trend and returning to RTD two years ago.

Telford said it was the feeling of ownership that comes from being on the RTD team, as opposed to being a hired adviser, that cinched the move.

"Being in the public sector, I believe you have more of a sense of owning the project," she said.

"In the private sector, you are producing results and managing staff, but you don't own the project. The mission of FasTracks attracted me."

Campaign contributions

Some of the firms working on FasTracks were big donors to the campaign to get voters to pass a sales tax increase to pay for the project. And some weren't.

• Carter & Burgess gave $50,000 to FasTracks Yes! So far, it has been paid nearly $7.9 million on contracts worth $18.9 million, with more to come.

• CH2M Hill donated $70,000 to the campaign and has a $5.1 million contract for the Gold Line environmental impact study. It is also a subcontractor on the U.S. 36 rail and highway projects.

• Some firms already were working for RTD prior to the vote. PBS&J has been the lead consultant on the Interstate 70 East Corridor - the FasTracks train to Denver International Airport - since 2003. It has an $11.5 million contract and gave $19,000 to the campaign.

• Together, 35 firms working on FasTracks made donations totaling $542,570 - 15 percent of $3.63 million total.

• Yet 59 other consulting firms on the project gave nothing to the campaign.

• And one of the highest profile contracts so far, the construction management deal on the West Corridor, went to an experienced transit-building partnership of Herzog Contracting of St. Joseph, Mo., and Stacy & Witbeck of Alameda, Calif. Neither firm gave a dime to the campaign and beat out other bidders with both experience building other rail for RTD and a record of campaign donations.

Kevin Flynn

FasTracks consulting firms

• ENGINEERING Carter & Burgess

CH2M Hill

DMJM Harris

Fraser Design

Goodbee & Associates

HDR Engineering

LTK Engineering

Parsons Brinckerhoff

PBS&J

Solutions Engineering

Triunity Engineering

URS

• PLANNING AND DESIGN David Evans & Associates

Design Core

Geocal

Hartwig & Associates

IBI Group

IEI

Interactive Elements

Lyman Henn

Nelson-Nygaard

Ordonez & Vogelsang

Perspective 3

Pinyon Environmental

PKM Design Group

Richard Chong & Associates

RNL Architecture

RockSol Consulting Group

Roybal Corp.

SAIC Environmental

SL King & Associates

TCB Geotech

TEC

Upward Solutions

Visonland Engineers

Yeh Associates

• QUALITY MANAGEMENT/CONTROL Delcan

DQP Enterprises

Kittelson & Associates

Seaborn Engineering

• DIVERSITY CONSULTING

Armand Resource Group

BW Architects

Plasticomm Industries

Romero & Wilson

Townsend Management Group

• SUPPORT SERVICES Bolima

Denver City Reprographics

Doss Technical Services

LKG-CMC

LS Gallegos & Associates

Monks & Associates

Poitra Visual Communications

Project Vision 21

Regnier & Associates

SEH

Transperfect Translations

Two Hundred

• DEVELOPMENT ANALYSIS EPS

Fehr & Peers Associates

• UNION STATION MASTER DEVELOPERS East-West Partners

Continuum Partners

• PARTNERING FMI Corp.

• REAL ESTATE HC Peck & Associates

Merrick & Associates

The Lund Partnership

Vigil Land Consultants

• NOISE/VIBRATION ANALYSIS Harris Miller Miller Hanson

KM Chng Environmental

• COST ESTIMATING Kal Krishnan Consulting Services

Stone River

• CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT/GENERAL CONTRACTOR Harris Kocher Smith

Herzog Contracting

Stacy & Witbeck

Walker Parking Consultants

• PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT/ INFORMATION 360 Media

Aspen Graphics

Carnes Creative

CDR Associates

Communication Infrastructure Group

CRL Associates

David Kenney Group

Doc 1 Solutions

Elegant Catering

GBSM

Intermountain Corporate Affairs

Launch Advertising

M. Combs & Associates

Neighborhood Solutions

PRACO

PromoLinks

Strategic Community Partners

Studio 5G

Welchert and Britz

Xcelente! Marketing

flynnk@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5247