The Grays Harbor PUD has changed the way it monitors contractors and outside crews in the wake of the 2007 storm response and its legal dispute with contractor Tim Spradlin.
PUD commissioners yesterday held a special workshop with staff about lessons learned from the case, in which the PUD challenged Spradlin’s rates and bills for emergency work during the storm but lost in court.
Engineering Manager Wes Gray presented the commissioners with a two-page outline of contract crew storm duty guidelines he said the district has been using since the 2007 storm, which was declared a federal disaster.
“We have been applying it from 2008 on,” Gray said of the guidelines. “We use these guidelines now whether we are doing storm restoration work or contract construction work.”
The first item requires construction crews to report to a storm supervisor, who will identify the work area and review the scope of the work, circuit map to be used and a list of materials provided by the PUD’s engineering staff.
The PUD in November had to pay Spradlin $4.43 million for disputed work performed during and after the severe storm, during which he was one of several contractors brought in to do emergency work for the district.
The PUD disputed his rates and his bills as “extraordinary and unprecedented” after paying the initial four invoices, but Spradlin prevailed in a Superior Court lawsuit that was upheld last year by the state Court of Appeals.
Under the guidelines now used, Gray said there will be oversight from a field inspector “who understands our standards, our practices, and has a real good sense of what we want.”
During the 2007 storm, Gray said the PUD had several different people serving in that capacity: retired linemen, current linemen and foremen, and even engineering personnel.
The inspectors then will be assigned to a contracted crew, whether it is for road building and clearing, tree cutting or line construction.
Before crews are assigned, engineering staff first will go out to preview what needs to be done and come up with a generic scope of work, Gray said. That assessment then will be taken to the PUD’s legal staff to come up with a specific contract.
“From the standpoint of preventing mischief with our contracts, we’re going to have a district employee assigned and they are going to be responsible,” Gray said.
Gray noted it’s also important to document the work to be done with before and after photos, especially when the work might need further documentation from an agency like the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA held up a number of PUD bills submitted for reimbursement after the storm, and the PUD still is awaiting a final check of $443,000 that the agency had held up in one of several audits of the storm work.
One of the main disputes in the Spradlin case was over the rates the contractor charged for emergency service.
Gray said the district now requires contractors to provide cost sheets with hourly rates for employees as well as equipment. The rates must be updated every year.
PUD General Manager Rick Lovely said all rates, even overtime rates, have to be specified in advance.
“So we know what we will be billed and if the billing doesn’t show up and comport to that, we instantly have the ability to say, ‘What’s going on here,’ ” Lovely said. “There is no guesswork.”
Inspectors also have to fill out a day-to-day report, something Gray said was started in 2008 during the cleanup after the storm.
“Those lessons learned we tried to implement as quickly as we could after the storm and use them in our day-to-day business,” he said.
Commissioner Dave Timmons, who had asked for the workshop after voting to pay Spradlin in November, said he was pleased with the response. “It looks like a good process,” Timmons said.
