| Wastewater | Deer Island, Boston Harbor - Page 17 |
| Robert Levy would receive much praise and deserve much credit for leading the MWRA in the first phase of the Boston Harbor cleanup project. He earned a reputation of being honest, upfront, and fair in negotiations. It also helped that he had a large pot of mitigation money to spread around. The Fore River Shipyard purchase had been exactly what was needed to get the harbor cleanup project back on track. But he still needed a massive new sewage treatment plant built, a task far outside his area of expertise, and as the head of the agency responsible for all the wastewater and water needs of a large metropolitan area, he had many other issues to deal with. What might be considered the single most successful negotiation that led to the new treatment getting built on-time and on-budget was Levy convincing Richard D. Fox to take the job as the head of construction for the project. |
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While Richard Fox was never the Executive Director of the MWRA it can be argued he was the single most important person who ensured that the project to build a new sewage treatment plant on Deer Island would meet its design specifications and be built on-schedule and on budget. Unlike the renowned Howard Carson, in 1887 the designer and first chief engineer of the Boston Main Drainage system, Fox was not the inventor of anything like the Carson trench machine to speed sewer construction, nor did he file patents for tunneling and waterproofing methods as Carson did when he led the construction of the first Boston Harbor tunnel. What Fox knew, as a vice president at the engineering firm Camp, Dresser & McKee (CDM), was the value of how a properly conceived and implemented plan for managing the design and construction of a project would give it the best chance of meeting its technical requirements and get built on-time and on-budget. And he had already been working on the project before Levy convinced him to take the job. |
| One of the first tasks Judge Mazzone faced after taking over the harbor cleanup case in May of 1985 was to set a date by which the harbor should be cleaned up. The Conservation Law Foundation, a party in the federal suit wanted it done in 1986, the EPA said by 1998. Richard Fox, working as a consultant for the MWRA, proposed a phased sequential completion schedule with the final secondary treatment facilities completed by 1999. Mazzone was impressed, especially with early phases such as ending discharges from the Nut Island treatment plant, and noted, |
| “…“Mr. Fox was clearly better qualified and more familiar with the intricacies of the existing construction schedule than any other expert at the hearing.” |
| For Levy taking over the MWRA getting Fox onboard to lead the construction of the new treatment plant was a major win. Most industry professionals would look askance at a position at a state agency rife with patronage jobs and legislative meddling. Fortunately, Judge Garrity’s insistence that the MWRA be independent gave Levy far more flexibility than other state agencies. Levy did a few eyebrows in September of 1987 when he announced that he wanted Fox to lead the construction team with an annual salary of $150,000. When Fox was approved by the board at the end of October 1987 his finalized salary at $125,000 was still more than the under $100,000 salaries at the time of both Levy and Governor Dukakis. |
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| The challenge facing the MWRA and Fox as the head of construction for the Boston Harbor Project was not to fall victim of something known as the “Iron Law of Megaprojects” (megaprojects defined as large-scale projects costing more than $1 billion). Coined by Bent Flyvbjerg. a Danish professor at Oxford University in England, his research showed that ninety percent of megaprojects were "over budget, over time, over and over again." There was another megaproject underway in Boston in the 1990s that faced the same challenge, the Big Dig. Conceived in the 1970s, the project rerouted Boston’s Central Artery into a tunnel and constructed another tunnel leading from the Massachusetts Turnpike under the harbor to Logan Airport. |
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Much has been written comparing the two Boston megaprojects after the Boston Harbor Project was completed on-time and on-budget, and the Big Dig fell victim to the “Iron Law.” In reality the two megaprojects faced significantly different challenges in their construction, their funding, and most importantly in their management. There had been a plan to depress Boston’s Central Artery before Fred Salvucci, but it is he, first as transportation advisor to Boston mayor Kevin White and then as Secretary of Transportation for Michael Dukakis, who is identified as the father of the Big Dig. When Dukakis left office at the end of 1980, Salvucci was out before construction had even begun on the project he had supported and promoted since the early 1970s. Looking back in a 1996 CommonWealth magazine article, he identified the lack of a clear owner/operator as one of main reasons for the problems that developed in the project. Initially there had been confusion on who even should be the owner of the project. Should it be the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), or possibly the Massachusetts Turnpike, even the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) was considered when a rail link between and North and South Stations was included in the early planning for the project. Finally, because much of the funding for the Big Dig was coming from the federal government the Massachusetts Department of Public Works (now Massachusetts Highway Department) was designated as the owner/operator. Without a large professional staff, and having responsibility for highways across the entire state, they could provide only limited oversight. It wasn’t until 1997 that the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority was given the ownership role and even then, oversight was limited. Salvucci would say, |
“…if Weld had designated the Turnpike [as the owner-operator in the beginning], he could have hired Dick Fox if he wanted to. Or he could have invented a totally new agency if he wanted to. But he needed to designate the owner, and that was the thing he didn’t do. To me, that’s the fatal flaw..” |
| Boston University Assistant Professor Virginia Greiman, an internationally recognized expert on mega-project management, writing for NASA’s APPEL Knowledge Services, also identified a lack of project management as the most important reason for costs overruns on the Big Dig, |
“…Unfortunately, the Big Dig’s project organization was not fully integrated until July 1, 1998, when design of the project was 99 percent complete and construction was 45.9 percent complete. If there is a single cause for the massive cost escalation on the Big Dig, it probably involves the management of the project’s complex integration...” |
| For Levy, the court-ordered cleanup of Boston Harbor was only a part of his job running the MWRA. There was all the other work required to maintain and upgrade other parts of the metropolitan sewerage system. Plus, the whole metropolitan water supply system had to be managed, maintained, and improved as needed. Even what was involved in the task of “cleaning up Boston Harbor” was not clearly defined. Almost too numerous to count CSO issues had to be addressed and there were few simple solutions. A major new relief sewer for the south metropolitan was also needed. Was that included in the $6 billion estimated cost for the cleanup? It was in no small part the professionalism of Richard Fox that confined Judge Mazzone to accept a plan for the cleanup of Boston Harbor that included a new wastewater treatment plant on Deer Island, a sludge-to-fertilizer plant at Fore River, an inter-island from Nut Island to Deer Island eliminating the Nut Island treatment plant, and an outfall tunnel nine miles out into Massachusetts Bay. Construction could be done in sequence with each completed step providing improvements in the quality of the water in the harbor, and it would all be finished by the year 2000. All the work needed to correct problems with CSOs and other issues would be addressed but not as part of what was now called The Boston Harbor Project (BHP). |
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In its Fiscal Year 1989 Current Expense Budget the MWRA group Fox headed was called the Project Management Unit (PMU). The name was changed to the Program Management Division (PMD) for 1990. All employment in the group was temporary based solely on the expertise needed to manage a specific portion of the project. No pesky civil service requirements to be met nor need to listen to legislators and their deserving constituents who might want a job. Fox could hire who he wanted, including people from his former company CDM. Approved by the Advisory Board for up to 80 people, a little over 50 would be the maximum employed at a given time. Fox pulled together and initially ran what must be one of the best, more knowledgeable owner/operator groups ever assembled. While the team Fox would assemble for the MWRA would be sizeable, it would not be capable of both designing and managing the construction of the massive new treatment plant. The agency would hire two private sector firms to perform those functions on the project. |
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Despite the added cost, for owners of building projects ranging in size from a local high school up to megaprojects, it has proved beneficial both financially and in meeting deadlines to hire a Construction Manager (CM). According to the Construction Management Association of America a CM “provides a project’s owner with effective management of the project's schedule, cost, quality, safety, scope, and function.” For the building committee of a new local high school, where few if any of its members would have construction experience, the CM, while an added cost, typically saves money by functioning as an agent for the committee explaining and addressing any construction problems that might arise. For MWRA’s megaproject the CM had a whole added level of responsibilities including, from the fiscal 1989 Expense Budget report, day-to-day program management including input into design, cost estimating, program coordination and scheduling, community relations, permit issuance, water transportation, bulk materials handling, value engineering, pre-purchase of equipment and materials, resident engineering, facility testing, staff training, and technical support for contractor selection. The CM not the MWRA would be effectively in charge of day-to-day operations. |
| The responsibility of the other consultant group, called the Lead Design Engineer (LDE), was to direct the design of the new treatment plant including the primary and secondary treatment facilities and the two tunnels. It was tasked with developing design standards, providing drawings and outline specifications at 15-20 percent completion level, then coordinating the work from all designers to ensure the integrity and functionality of the completed plant. The firm would also do detailed design on elements such as utilities, roads, landscaping, earthwork. and berms. |
| Both the project Dick Fox led, and the Big Dig had the same three groups, an internal owner/operator team and two external consultant companies, one managing the construction and the other engineering design. The difference was in the management structure. The Big Dig decided to have the two external consulting firms work as a single team reporting to the owner/operator. The MWRA, on the other hand, had both the CM and LDE report independently to its owner/operator group, the PMD. Its' organizational structure mirrored that of the CM and LDE with skilled, experienced people in key roles. Initially something the Big Dig could never do. In addition to oversight of consultants, the PMD retained the sole authority to bid and award contracts, select consultants, authorize change orders, progress payments, and resolve claims. It is interesting to speculate how different the outcome of Big Dig might have been if a fully staffed, experienced owner/operator team had been established at the start of that project. |
| When the MWRA in the late 1990s tallied up the total cost to build the new sewage treatment plant on Deer Island, the construction management functions - the consultant company plus non-construction items training, legal fees, insurance, permits, project offices, computers, etc. – came to just over 10.5% of the total cost. A tidy sum when the total cost of the project was $3.4 billion. The company chosen as the CM consultant received 75% of the total spent on construction management, just under $265 million. One of only five contracts valued at over $100 million and the only one of that size that was not a construction contract. |
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The first time most people heard anything about a company that would “oversee construction” was when Boston-based Stone & Webster sued the MWRA. The company was a Boston having been formed in 1889 by Charles A. Stone and Edwin S. Webster, both recent graduates in electrical engineering from MIT. The theorized correctly that the electrification of country that was just beginning would be a good field for a consulting electrical engineering firm. Successful in the field all the way through to nuclear power plant design, business slowed after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. In an era of increased awareness of the environment, Stone & Webster often seemed more on the wrong side of the issue. But they were from Boston and if there was going to be a lot money spent on the Boston Harbor Project shouldn’t a Boston company be a candidate? An announcement by the company in June of 1987 that it had been hired by the Walt Disney company to expansion of its Florida resort’s wastewater facility from 6 million gallons a day to 9 million gallons seemed a weak attempt to prove their competence in the field (the new Deer Island Treatment Plant was being designed to handle peak flows of over one billion gallons). |
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After submitting a bid to be the Consulting Manager the company discovered in October of 1987 that it had not made the list of companies the MWRA was considering for the role. The company initiated a lobbying effort having employees mail out more than 1,000 letters to legislators complaining about the MWRA selection process. Then in January of 1988 they sued the MWRA accusing the authority of violating its own procedures in a selecting a contractor to oversee construction of the Boston Harbor Project. Claiming he was in no way connected, in mid-February Massachusetts State Auditor Joseph DeNucci filed a report demanding an investigation into the MWRA’s process for selecting the CM. Not helping Levy, then just recently named executive director, was another DeNucci report criticizing the agency for the former director’s spending on marble ashtrays. Levy could only promise reforms on the later but on the choice of the CM in April he countered with a rebuttal (not available online) charging the investigators with “factual errors” while at the same time offering a conciliatory note to work with the auditor on guarding against fraud and wasteful spending. That resolved the issue with the auditor who likely realized he had potentially overstepped his authority by getting involved in decision to award contracts before any money had been spent. Stone & Webster was out of the running for the CM job put would later receive $28 million worth of work from the MWRA. |
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The company selected in March of 1988 to be construction manager on the project was Kaiser Engineers, one of the many companies created by West-coast American Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser (1882-1967). He is the Kaiser of Kaiser Aluminum, Kaiser Motors, and Kaiser Permanente – one of the earliest employee HMOs where employees could receive medical services for a fixed, per month payment. For the World War II generation, he is probably best known as the man behind the company that built over 2,700 Liberty Ships for the war effort. Some say the legend of Rosie the Riveter started at a Kaiser Shipyard. Kaiser had started out in the highway construction business building roads in the Pacific Northwest expanding to become a prime contractor on such major projects as the Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, and the footings for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. |
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Interestingly, while Kaiser’s fame is more often associated with his West Coast endeavors, he was from the Lake Placid, N.Y. area. It is there where he met Bess Fosburgh who he married in Boston in 1907. When Bess died in 1951 after a long illness Henry within three days announced to his sons that was going to marry Alyce Chester, the nurse who had taken care of Bess and 35 years his junior. Reportedly with the blessing of Bess. A month later they were married and shortly thereafter moved to Hawaii where he built a hotel complex and residential area. When Henry died 16 years later Alyce got half of his fortune worth in the billions with the rest going to a Kaiser medical foundation. His living son got none. Alyce left Hawaii, remarried, and reportedly moved to Greece. It is not clear how long she lived. Edgar F. Kaiser, Henry’s surviving son was left in a weak business position and in 1978 the over diversified Kaiser Industries, with businesses in cement, gypsum, steel, aluminum, chemicals, aerospace, electronics, broadcasting, sand and gravel, and paving was broken up. Raymond International, a Houston-based construction company, purchased Kaiser Engineers. When the oil and gas market had a downturn in the 1980s the company defaulted on loans and was broken up. In 1988 Kaiser Engineers was purchased by ICF, Fairfax, Va. The Inner City Fund (ICF) had been established in 1969 by four black World War II fighter pilots to promote investment in Washington, D.C. area companies. Over the years the focus had shifted to large government contracts in health, energy, and environmental markets. The purchase of Kaiser Engineers tripled its size. |
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With the MWRA report to the state auditor clarifying the process that resulted in the selection of ICF Kaiser for the CM role is not available, what is available is a matrix of raw scores in seven different categories that the MWRA used to evaluate vendors. ICF Kaiser had the highest overall score and top scores in three categories, experience, understanding, and the ability to work together. All very vague. There are two factors that likely influenced the selection. First, Kaiser Engineers already a track record of success in Boston. It was the Raymond Kaiser company that had earlier been the “coordinating consultant” – not yet called construction manager – for the MBTA’s – then MTA’s – Southwest Corridor Project, at that point the largest single construction project undertaken in Massachusetts. The rerouting of Boston’s Orange Line and redevelopment of land along a railroad line where buildings had been razed in preparation for the construction of the I-95 extension into downtown Boston. It was Governor Frank Sargent who declared in 1970 a moratorium on all highway construction within Route 128. Coincidently, about the time he launched the program that resulted in Metcalf & Eddy’s 1975 EMMA reports, in many ways the real first step in the Boston Harbor cleanup. In 1975 Governor Michael Dukakis was able to transfer the $600 million the Interstate Highway Fund had appropriated for the project to transit and community development. On May 4, 1987, the Governor proudly opened the Orange Line’s new path through Boston’s Southwest Corridor. Unfortunately for his presidential aspirations a polluted Boston Harbor was a far more effective target for George H. W. Bush. Nevertheless, Kaiser Engineers had brought the project in on-time and on-budget. |
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The second factor likely influencing the MWRA’s selection of Kaiser Engineers for the CM role was the company’s competence in utilizing a recently introduced computerized system for project management. In 1977 a company in England named Metier Management Systems created a software solution specifically for project management. Named Artemis it was one of the first business-specific offerings to use a relational database to store information. That information could be accessed by different modules for functions such as estimating and budgeting, scheduling, procurement, tracking installed equipment, engineering progress, controlling service costs, and controlling project cost and progress. Kaiser Engineers had taken the software and customized it for their construction management business and called it KEMS (Kaiser Engineers Management System). For the MWRA’s project on Deer Island limited space, limited access, and a court-ordered deadline for completion made adherence to a schedule imperative. MWRA officials described KEMS as, |
| “…a fully integrated management tool well suited to a multi-faceted, high-cost project. KEMS divides the multi-billion-dollar, n-year wastewater treatment plant project into 11 large summary groups, which include logistics, site preparation and major construction components. Physical progress curves, an “S” curve imposed over a bar chart, provide staff with an at-a-glance overview of the entire project, indicating progress in each group. This graph summarizes schedule, cost, and progress data, using worker hours as a common yardstick.” |
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The MWRA announced the consulting firm they had chosen as the Lead Design Engineer in July of 1988, five months after Kaiser Engineers had been selected as the P/CM. According to the agency this was because the sequence of the construction of the new plant would guide the design so the CM should come first. Bids were accepted for LDE as required by law, and the firm with the lowest bid won, but with 20/20 hindsight it seems the choice was obvious, the Boston firm Metcalf & Eddy. The same Metcalf & Eddy that in a 1939 report first recommended that the Boston’s sewage should be treated and not just dumped into the harbor. The same company that wrote the EMMA reports in the mid-1970s that should have started the cleanup of Boston Harbor. The same company that analyzed Massachusetts Bay for the Dukakis administration’s failed 301(h) waiver applications, and then did the studies for the MWRA’s accepted outfall location. The same company that wrote what for wastewater engineers are the “bibles” for the practice. First the three volume “American Sewerage Practice” in 1914, “Sewerage and Sewage Disposal” in 1922, and then first in 1979, with continued updates, “Wastewater Engineering: Collection, Treatment, Disposal.” |
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Metcalf & Eddy was an obvious choice, and it does not appear that any of the rejected firms complained. The total spent on LDE for the BHP was less than one-third spent for the CM, still the $105 million was no small amount of money and Metcalf and Eddy would get 85%. Possibly why there were no complaints was the fact that the MWRA, beyond the projects connected to Deer Island, would be needing a lot of engineering design work on both its wastewater and water infrastructure. The 1997 budget report showed another $265 million paid to a wide range of engineering firms for a wide range of projects. Metcalf & Eddy would receive an additional $38 million for work on other projects. Basically, all the companies that had ever done work for the old MDC system would see contracts. It’s a who’s who of engineering design firms, Black & Veatch, C.E. Maguire, Havens and Emerson, Sverdup, Whitman & Howard, among others. Parson Brinckerhoff, the engineering firm for the Big Dig did work for the MWRA. CDM, Dick Fox’s company would see $60 million in work over the decade. |
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Under the LDE category in the MWRA’s 1997 tally of expenses showed just over $9 million going to the McDonnell Douglas company. The MWRA was not buying airplanes, but it was taking a page from the aerospace company’s playbook and investing in the latest Computer Aided Design and Drafting (CADD) solution offered by the company’s Graphic Design System (GDS) division. In the mid-1980s it had been large companies manufacturing commercial airlines, jet fighters, space vehicles, and automobiles that were using CAD, not a public agency building a wastewater treatment plant. It was a prescient investment, one made with significant upfront costs but with multiple short and long-term benefits, and one likely a non-independent MDC would not or could not have made. A 1998 MWRA report states that constructing the BHP required 32 design contracts performed by approximately 20 engineering and architectural firms. The GDS CADD systems included customized software, CPUs, graphics terminals, and related peripherals, and cost more than $100,000 each. The MWRA supplied the systems to the engineering firms. The MWRA estimated that between 30,000-40,000 discrete components were used in the design of BHP. All the information from the CADD systems for the components was in a relational database, this one from Oracle. Maintaining uniform design standards from companies located throughout the country was critical for ensuring interoperability of the work from different vendors. This was especially important because the sequential construction schedule employed to meet the court ordered deadlines. It had portions of the plant being completed while other portions still had designs just being finalized. Once the plant was in operation having a database with information on every component in the plant made maintenance much easier. |
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