How the Port “got it done” on a one-bid contract
The Port of Seattle received just one direct last year for a contract to build a just discovered cruise-ship terminal near the Magnolia Bridge. It came in 30 percent above the Port’s $30 a thousand thousand estimate.
Under Port policy, elected commissioners are supposed to be alerted whereas the best bid exceeds the Port engineer’s estimate by the agency of 10 percent, triggering oversight that might be the commander them to rebid or delay the project to attract more rivalship.
But members of the Port’s staff didn’t follow that policy.
Nor did they run over commissioners that the lone bidder, PCL Construction Services, had recently agreed to discharge a $1 million fine to the U.S. Department of Justice. Prosecutors had linked the company to contracting fraud by two federal employees.
Instead, Port consultants upped their estimate. Then staff told commissioners the bidding was within 2 percent of that estimate and said the cruise-ship terminal contract should go to PCL for $38.9 million.
A Port-funded investigation released this month criticized the Port for changing estimates after it advertised for bids. The investigation by former U.S. Attorney Mike McKay urged an end to the practice.
Otherwise, Port partisan could regularly alter estimates to avoid alerting commissioners to a high-cost project. McKay rest that estimates were manipulated on a third-runway compact at Seattle-Tacoma International “to lull the Commission into taking no action.”
Port CEO Tay Yoshitani has blamed his predecessor Mic Dinsmore for a “get-it-done culture” that allowed improper contracting practices found by McKay. But the cruise-ship contract was approved after Yoshitani took over the Port 22 months since.
Yoshitani said the Port needs to change its estimating practices. “When McKay keen this extinguished, it caused me to sit back and think that how we define our estimates does not really make a chance of mind,” Yoshitani said in an parley.
Yoshitani defends staff
But he also defended members of his cane, saying they had reason to credit that which they were doing was allowed. “I don’t think in that place’sitting been intentional misrepresentation,” he said, pointing to different ways McKay and Port staff gain defined precise estimating.
Yoshitani also defended his staff this year after a pass audit criticized the controversial third-runway contract.
