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Civil grand jury flags city construction-management problems; Board asks for further analysis
Summary
The civil grand jury's construction-program report identified fragmented systems, weak change-order reporting, insufficient contract close-outs, and recommended benchmarking and a citywide construction-management system. The Board accepted many findings, requested further analysis or recommended actions where jurisdictional limits applied, and continued the hearing for follow-up.
A civil grand jury report presented Oct. 9 criticized San Francisco's management of building construction projects and urged reforms including contractor past-performance criteria, uniform change-order reporting, mandatory contract closeouts, a citywide construction-management system, and improved public reporting of project final costs.
The grand-jury committee said the city lacks a unified construction-management system across departments, making it difficult to compare original budgets to final costs and to track change orders. The report noted a 10-year capital plan exceeding $25 billion and flagged large projects such as the San Francisco General Hospital rebuild and the public-safety building, both of which had hundreds of change orders.
Report author Jerry Dradler urged the Board to require standardized reporting, benchmarking against other cities, and stronger controls on awarding future contracts so poor-performing firms cannot repeatedly win low bids and leave projects incomplete or over budget. "The people of San Francisco deserve the tools to monitor construction spending that is funded by bonds the voters were asked to approve," the civil grand jury wrote.
DPW and controller's office representatives acknowledged the issues and said chapter-6 departments are working collaboratively on reforms, including a shared database and contractor-performance tracking under discussion for implementation by summer 2016. Supervisors and staff agreed several recommendations merit further study; where the Board lacks direct jurisdiction, the committee recorded that the recommendations should be supported but implemented by the responsible agencies.
Committee action
Given the breadth of recommendations and the need for interagency work, the committee continued the hearing to the call of the chair and asked for follow-up analysis on specific recommendations, including a six-month timetable for some benchmarking work with the Budget and Legislative Analyst and for consideration of technology requirements to support a citywide construction-management system.
