From Fox News (Boston):
Taxpayers paid for four projects before they realized that the contractor was not performing. Those are better chances than in baseball. What ever happened to the three
Company barred from public jobs
A construction company that was the subject of numerous complaints of shoddy work on public projects has lost the ability to perform public work in this state.
Barr, Inc. lost state certification last Friday, meaning the company is ineligible to perform public work for at least a year, after which they can re-apply for certification again.
The state Division of Capital Asset Management removed the Connecticut-based company’s certification because Barr received too many failing scores from municipal projects around the state.“This Final Determination is based upon your firm receiving failing scores on four project evaluations,” DCAM compliance officer Richard Sharp wrote in the Sept. 4 letter.
FOX Undercover reported last May that Barr, Inc. was the general contractor in several problem construction projects. Despite the company’s history of cost overruns and other problems, the state continued to certify them to continue doing public construction.
Cities and towns grade contractors on every major public construction project. After three failing scores within five years, and the state will bar contractors from public work.
But Massachusetts Inspector General Gregory Sullivan said that too many shoddy contractors continue getting public jobs by persuading cities and towns to give them scores higher than they deserve.
“This is the absolute most expensive form of grade inflation you can imagine. The contractor who gets passing grades for failing projects are then allowed to go on and do the same thing, across town, across the state,” Sullivan said.
Sometimes these contractors “blackmail” cities and towns to give good grades, Sullivan said, by not finishing projects or filing lawsuits unless good scores are given out.
“Some of the shoddy contractors have basically held up government officials by stopping the work and using a form of like blackmail and coercion in effect by saying, ‘If you don’t give us a good score, we won’t finish the work,’” Sullivan said. “’Let’s just settle. We’ll do the punch list. In fact we’ll do some more work for you. Give us a high score.’”
These inflated scores are given out so often that Sullivan calls them the best kept secret in public construction. And an expensive one. Sullivan estimates it cost probably more than $100 million over the past 10 years.
“It’s a very big and expensive problem,” Sullivan said.
Barr, Inc. president Robert Darigan told FOX Undercover last spring that he doesn’t negotiate for higher scores. But an e-mail obtained by FOX Undercover suggests the company did just that over a score for building a new police headquarters in the town of Grafton.
The e-mail, from an architect involved in the project, says, “Barr agreed to drop about $20,000 in change order claims at the end of the project, but only if the Town agreed to give them a 90 DCAM rating, to which the town agreed.”
The town of Dartmouth gave a passing grade of 89 to Barr, Inc. for building the town’s new police station despite numerous quality problems and delays, all outlined in a nine-page letter from the town’s attorney which was obtained by FOX Undercover. Darigan earlier told FOX Undercover that the Dartmouth attorney’s letter contained “inaccurate” information.
DCAM said they were investigating both the Grafton and Dartmouth projects, but neither were ultimately used to revoke Barr, Inc’s certification. DCAM instead used failing scores from the Southbridge Department of Public Works facility and public library projects in Middleton, Great Barrington and Dracut.
Barr, Inc.’s certification was temporarily suspended after FOX Undercover’s original report. The company rebutted each of the failing scores, but DCAM in its final determination last Friday rejected the company’s appeals.
Darigan did not respond to a message left at his office Tuesday.
