Editorial
Get a Handle on Police Headquarters
The cost of the Downtown LAPD headquarters facilities went up another $40 million recently, reaching a staggering $437 million. The city needs to get a handle on this fast, because with construction costs still rising, a half-billion dollar project is on the horizon.
This is about more than just gasping at government expenditures, or raising an uproar over how taxpayer funds are being spent. What is clear is that someone has not done enough homework, that cost analyses were incomplete, and that leadership has stumbled. In 2004, the City Council approved a budget of $300 million for the project.
We do not dispute the need for a replacement for Parker Center. The current headquarters opened more than 50 years ago, is outdated and in poor physical condition. Construction on a replacement facility should have started at least a decade ago. That would have helped keep the price down by tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
The project, rising in the Civic Center on the block bounded by First, Second, Main and Spring streets, was opposed early on by area stakeholders who wanted a park on the site. That should not have stymied the building, but it should have spurred city officials to ensure that everything was in order with the development. Even when a groundbreaking took place in January, there were publicly stated expectations that the price would rise.
The project, expected to open in 2009, includes not just the main building, but nearby support facilities, among them a parking garage. Land acquisition costs for those other elements is uncertain, prompting city officials to warn recently that the budget remains unsettled for the development being constructed by Tutor-Saliba.
No one expects budgets for mega-projects to stay steady throughout construction; the unpredictable price of steel alone was always a cause of concern. But when costs rise to this degree, something is wrong somewhere else, too. The problem is almost certainly what it always is: change orders. They are difficult to plan for and contractors do not adequately allow for change orders in bids.
It inevitably turns out that some hole in the ground requires four scoops, not three. Or clay is being excavated, not the gravel that had been anticipated. Every adjustment in the construction means a change order. Every change order costs money not just for the extra work, but also for the paperwork required to bill for it.
On every major public project in memory, there has been a failure to plan for the cost of change orders. Every inch of every mile of MTA subway tunnel, it seemed, had some level of change order. As it happens, this sometimes involved the same contractor who is working on the police headquarters, Tutor-Saliba. To be fair, any contractor may well have charged for work not specifically in a bid, though maybe not every shovelful. The solution? Let's start with the city assuming responsibility and making plans so we don't hit $500 million. Or maybe this is where City Controller Laura Chick makes another splash with an audit.
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Source:
Los Angeles Downtown News
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