The Big Crumble (part V)

The age-old dictum “Follow the money!” appears to apply to the Big Dig Crumble as well, and Aaron Margolis over at HubPolitics.com is doing just that. Margolis’s investigation starts with a few fascinating items:

• State Att’y General Tom Reilly was “pushing for a deal with Bechtel [one of the major contractors] that would have given them safe harbor for future liabilities in [the] tunnel for a mere $85 million.”
• There’s an interesting chain of connections and patronage from MTA Chairman Matt Amorello to Mass House Sal DiMasi; it strikes me as a bit convoluted, but on the other hand, DiMasi doesn’t want to actually fire Amorello but instead give him another job at his current $223K/year salary.

It’s not only worth reading the entire posting by Margolis, it’s worth linking to the site, because Margolis is just getting started on following the money.

In the meantime, fallout from the collapse continues to yield a hard look at the project itself:

• The original Big Crumble plan called for lighter ceiling panels than the ones that were eventually installed (and which collapsed).
• Amy Goldstein at the Washington Post chronicles various problems and issues throughout the Big Crumble’s history, including cost overruns, warnings about bolts, and water leakage.
• Bechtel, the major contractor on the Big Crumble, finds itself being questioned not just for that project but for others as well. Note that the Boston Globe raised issues about Bechtel’s Big Crumble performance in a series of articles three years ago.
• A clear (IMHO) conflict of interest exists in that the US Federal Highway Administration is investigating the Big Crumble collapse — and FHA Chairman J. Richard Capka was previously the MTA CEO and directly over the Big Crumble.
• The Big Crumble is having an impact on Boston far beyond traffic snarls.
• Ted Reinstein at WCVB-TV touts the “hard, honest and responsible work” of the workers who actually built the Big Crumble — but does not appear to consider how many of them might well have known about or suspect the various design and construction flaws.

I’ve made enough posting on this subject that I’ve now created a separate “Big Crumble” category. You can see previous posting by clicking on that category over in the left sidebar. ..bruce..

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Category: Main, Project Management, The Big Crumble