Montgomery County Council member Roger Berliner urged Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission officials on Monday to reform the process for fixing roads dug up for pipe repair work.
During a committee meeting with agency officials, Berliner repeatedly mentioned an incident in Bethesda’s Edgemoor neighborhood, where a contractor for the utility, Metra Industries, failed to properly install a pipe underneath Bradley Boulevard in October 2013. As a result, the road had to be excavated multiple times—a process that hampered traffic and left the roadway a mess of construction cones and steel plates during the first half of 2014.
“How are you going to reform this process?” Berliner asked WSSC officials. “You certainly know about the horrific experience in Edgemoor. How are we going to make sure those things don’t happen again?”
Ross Beschner, who inspects construction contracts for WSSC, said the Edgemoor incident was a “perfect storm” of factors in which a low-performing contractor was the low bidder on the contract and was given too much time to complete it. Rather than completing the job, the contractor often pulled its crews from the site to work on other projects, which extended the amount of time it took to complete the work, Beschner said.
Metra was cited 15 times in the spring of 2014 by the county’s Department of Permitting Services for failing to move dumpsters and construction equipment from a staging area on Elm Street while it was attempting to repave Bradley Boulevard. In that case, residents had complained the equipment was messy and impeded the pedestrian path into downtown Bethesda.
Beschner said that after the problems in Edgemoor, WSSC terminated its relationship with Metra Industries. He also said WSSC is working to identify how to prevent poor-performing contractors from winning low-bid contracts in order to avoid similar situations in the future. On possible option would be to only allow certain “qualified” contractors to bid on larger projects, Beschner said.
Kevin Lethbridge, an inspector for WSSC, said the utility tries to have inspectors visit sites regularly, but even if they find problems, it can be difficult to terminate contracts while the work is underway.
“Trying to terminate a [contractor] during the contract is harder than pushing them during the project to make the necessary repairs,” Lethbridge said.
The county’s Department of Permitting Services is also considering ways to improve repair projects by the utility. Diane Schwartz-Jones, DPS director, said utilities are supposed to notify DPS when they begin and complete a project, but this doesn’t always happen. She says the department is planning to conduct twice-a-month inspections at major right-of-ways to help identify potential issues.
Also, the department is no longer allowing staging locations for construction equipment to be reviewed in the field. Instead, they’re requiring utilities to submit staging plans for review to make sure the locations are compatible with the community.
Schwartz-Jones, however, noted that WSSC doesn’t pay for its work permits because of state law. If the WSSC were required to pay permit fees, the county could put the funds towards the costs it incurs to inspect the utility’s road repairs.
