re: Contractors blame 'toxic' relationship with City Hall for New Orleans road work delays

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All of this on top of vehicle and job trailer vandalism, and murders ON JOB SITES are never addressed by the city. Never.

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They are busy with other personal priorities.

Some hogs have all four feet and their snout in the trough.

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$2 billion was under audit and wasn't able to be used until 2018.

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audits always follow the federal money. however, payment to ongoing projects are not frozen during an audit. new bids may be halted (I do NOT think this is accurate), but that is possible. i do not recall.

the city also decided not only to hire in house Project managers (additional overhead), as well as hire an engineering firm to help "project manage" these jobs.

so over and above adding payroll to the city even after these money is spent (or taken back by FEMA), but it also adds yet another layer of approvals that is required to approve a payment, or a change.

a "normal" new orleans project receives payment in approximately 90-100 days. all contracts state payment in 30 days. their list of excuses is exhausting. and BS.

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Damn, seriously? If true, I definitely don't blame the contractors.

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100% true. the suppliers wind up financing the projects in most cases. in a few cases the contractors finance it, but mainly the materials manufacturer/supplier floats them.

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a lot of unmapped and undocumented gas lines, drainage lines, etc. And most are probably not in good shape.

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this

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a contractor is brought out to rework a catch basin and ends up finding a whole bunch of other things wrong

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guaranteed every time

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requests information or guidance from the city, who in turn ignores them entirely.

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been there, got the tshirt

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New Orleans government's primary focus is to create paychecks

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30% of them actually work 50% of the time.

Can also add that both the contractor groups and engineering firms begged the city to hire a qualified and experienced 3rd party program management firm to handle this before the work started. Nola the only major city in the country to do it the way they have tried and failed.

Clara St between Roberts and Valence, (About the length of a football field) next to the firehouse took a year to lay asphalt.

Unrelated to the street. (Which was done before Covid) Our firehouse has been getting renovated since last April. Almost an entire year we’ve been displaced, while they drag their feet. To replace the bare minimum, of a 100 year old house, with funds from FEMA, given to the city for Katrina. Mother fricking Katrina money.

Contractors told us the same exact thing about the city.

So the reason it goes months after it’s ripped up is because the construction crews need S&WB to do their part with water lines and drainage.
It’s not the construction crews laying the street. It’s the city that holds up the progress.
I know this because we waited a year for our street to be finished. Tearing up a million dollar fire truck, while the city sat on their hands.

I've been a contractor my whole life. Nothing here is surprising.

The good contractors know which clients to avoid and simply don't bid work at that place. So now you have the bottom feeders and suckers bidding. A contract is issued and it becomes a marriage of thieves and incompetents. The result is the locals get screwed every time.

If there were honest money and value in these contracts, why isn't Bechtel, Perini, Boh Brothers, Tudor, Gray, Clayco, any big name contractors getting involved?

Because they know this s*** stinks and don't want to be within ten miles of it.

I personally have a list of no-bids, and Orleans parish, New Orleans, Chicago, Saint Louis, and New York are permanent members. No way, no how, no thank you. Ten years ago one of my junior salesmen sold something on Long Island without asking and I did everything I could to get out of it.

It's like sticking your head in an alligator's mouth. Somebody knows how to do it. There is probably a way to do it. I don't care to tackle that learning curve as someone got bit on the way up that ladder.

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Mostly backed by FEMA funds tied to Hurricane Katrina reconstruction,

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so the 24 year-olds working on the project were in Kindergarten when it was first approved