Significant of Nothing

Contract requirements allowed a maximum completion time of 140 calendar days with a penalty for late completion of $205,000 per calendar day and an incentive of $200,000 per day for early completion. Contract time commenced on Saturday, the 5th of February, with materials and equipment moving to the jobsite that day and through the weekend. Even though the final construction plans were not available until February 26th, C.C. Myers, Inc. immediately went to work on a 24-hour-day, 7 days-per-week schedule with up to 400 workmen on the job, while maintaining a safety record that even surpassed C.C. Myers, Inc.'s AGC award-winning program.

That summarizes the Herculean task undertaken and achieved by the construction company C.C. Myers in opening the world’s busiest road, the Santa Monica Freeway in Los Angeles that had been destroyed by the Northridge quake in 1994. Work was completed in 66 days…. 74 days ahead of schedule!

And the dirty little secret that no one ever wants to talk about is that this was accomplished, or rather expedited because then-Governor Pete Wilson relaxed the normal procurement and permitting regulations and waived environmental impact reports while implementing a bidding procedure and incentive system that tied potential profits to a successful on-time/ahead-of-time completion of the freeway.



In other news yesterday, Nancy Pelosi unveiled the House’s own version of the Great Stumble Sideways or This Old House (still haven’t settled on one yet) and not to be outdone by Obama, it comes with a price tag of $825 billion, a cool 50 bil over Obama’s projected stimulus plan cost.

We bring up the former as an example of quick, hard-hitting and smart decision-making and management practices as a juxtaposition to the opposite that this stimulus plan will be.

Is it really possible that a Congressionally-conceived and administered jobs program will waive environmental impact reports? Can you imagine Democrats signing off on relaxing overtime restrictions above union objection or establishing work-arounds for long and laborious open-bidding processes?

As President-elect Obama is soon to find out, there are a few specific reasons why nothing ever actually gets built here in California anymore and with Big Labor and Big Green both wanting to take responsibility for Democratic gains over the last couple of years, there are a few constituencies that will be looking for a little payback.

Then again, when actually building something is not really the end but rather the means to a 2, 3, 4 million man and woman jobs program, work for work's sake if you will, who the hell cares?