Within your company is a construction group whose responsibility it is to oversee design and construction of the factories that your company owns, which produce your product. The responsibilities of your Construction Division include hiring architects and engineers to design your factories, contractors to build them, and inspectors to watch over the construction on your behalf.
During the design phase of one of your factories, prior to construction, a member of your construction group reviews the plans and discovers a design flaw which could have serious implications regarding the structural integrity of the building. For example, the Construction Division employee "... raises concerns that post tensioning of the slabs and girders with the built in wall would create a zone of cracking along certain points".
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| This is taken from a presentation that Ed Blansitt, Montgomery County Inspector General, gave on September 3, 2014 to the annual conference of the Federal Audit Executive Committee (FAEC), Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria VA. |
The chief of your Construction Division, upon hearing your employee’s concerns, does nothing.
Construction proceeds. The slabs and the girders crack, along with the beams and the columns.
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| taken from the March 2013 SSTC structural report commissioned by Montgomery Co. and a similar report commissioned by WMATA |
Years pass.
The factory is almost complete; however, cracking in the slabs, beams, girders and columns is much too extensive to ignore. Also, your Production Division, which will utilize the new factory to make your product, is balking over occupying the flawed factory, concerned that the building’s flaws will add cost to producing your product, and could even affect worker safety.
As CEO, are you happy with this situation? How would you deal with it? Would you fire the chief of your Construction Division? Would you blame the engineer, contractor and inspector that your company selected and hired, but not your company, especially considering that your company owns the factory and that your employee identified the problem four years earlier, and your company did nothing about it? Would you tell your stockholders that your company's employees, including you, were just "along for the ride", instead of being "in the driver's seat" as owner of the factory in question?
The answers are obvious, unless you’re Montgomery County.
Montgomery County's Executive makes excuses for the County's gross negligence in not stopping design/construction and resolving the problem when it was identified four years’ earlier. Also, as opposed to the CEO of the manufacturing company, Montgomery County’s Executive has no problem passing on costs for the problem (including repairs, or demolishing the flawed building and starting over) to the purchasers of the company’s product.
Do you see the difference between how government operates and how private business operates?
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| Silver Spring Transit Center |
More than a year and a half after Montgomery County posted KCE's report documenting the SSTC's serious flaws on the County's website, the following questions remain unanswered:
- Why did Montgomery County non-competitively select Foulger Pratt to build the SSTC, Parsons Brinkerhoff to design it and Balter Company to inspect and test concrete and to serve as special quality inspector?
- Were political contribution$ part of the $election proce$$?
- Why is Montgomery County repairing the lemon SSTC when the public was promised, and paid more than retail for, a brand new, unflawed transit center?
- Why didn't Montgomery County, the Federal Transit Administration and the Maryland Transit Administration hold public meetings, before beginning repairs to the seriously flawed, lemon SSTC, to explain to the public what they are doing and why, and to answer the public's questions, and take their comments, on the public record?
This is my "best shot". 124 posts over 10 months. I've done my best to add truth to incomplete and inaccurate media reports (print, TV, radio, internet).
The truth can be found:
The truth can be found:
- in KCE's March 2013 data-filled and thorough report of the SSTC's serious design and construction flaws that is available for viewing and downloading on Montgomery County's website. Have you read it?
- in testimony from WMATA's engineers before the Montgomery County council
- in WMATA's consultant's report that is also available on Montgomery County's website
- in facts contained in the Montgomery County Inspector General incomplete report and statements (incomplete in the sense that the IG fails to address why and how Montgomery County noncompetitively selected (via public-private partnership) Foulger Pratt, Parsons Brinkerhoff and Balter Co. to build, design and inspect/test concrete for the SSTC respectively. Were political "contribution$" part of the $election Proce$$?)
- from my own education (civil engineering degree) and experience (40+ years, including PE licenses in MD, DC, VA and several other states)
In addition to incomplete and inaccurate media reports, adding to the misinformation:
- propaganda in the form of incomplete, inaccurate and unchallenged press releases and public statements by politicians and other technically-unqualified persons
- unchallenged, baseless, self-serving statements from Montgomery County elected officials and staff
Will the truth ever come out? I don't know.
The biggest obstacle that I see to the truth coming out is public apathy. Hard to figure, because that's your $ being flushed:
Finally, to those who wish to contact me, to ask a question or to make a technically sound comment, you can do so through the comment feature of this blog. If you're selling something, or if you want to criticize without having the technical qualifications in engineering and construction to back up your criticism, then don't bother.
The biggest obstacle that I see to the truth coming out is public apathy. Hard to figure, because that's your $ being flushed:
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| 53% federal funding, 11% MD, 36% Montgomery County |
Finally, to those who wish to contact me, to ask a question or to make a technically sound comment, you can do so through the comment feature of this blog. If you're selling something, or if you want to criticize without having the technical qualifications in engineering and construction to back up your criticism, then don't bother.
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