Bovis Lend Lease Has Defenders After Tough Week

It seemed like a project few would want to take on: dismantling the former Deutsche Bank building, a toxic hulk littered with human remains since the September 11, 2001, collapse of the World Trade Center towers.

Bovis Lend Lease, a global construction management firm whose signs are ubiquitous at construction sites in the city's best ZIP codes, was happy to sign up.

The firm was the first private contractor to join the bucket brigades on the burning pile at ground zero. Its workers stayed for months after September 11 to finish the job early — under budget. Despite the financial and physical risks, it may have seemed like a natural choice to stick with the job.

"We wanted to finish what we started," the Bovis Lend Lease principal-in-charge of the New York office, James Abadie, said in an interview with New York Construction magazine last month.

Yet almost from the start, the demolition project at 130 Liberty St. has been marked by problems, including safety violations that may turn out to be criminal.

Yesterday, two firefighters were injured when scaffolding buckled and collapsed after a worker dropped a pallet jack — a large tool used to transport heavy objects — from the 23rd floor. One of the firefighters, William Corbetis of Engine 258, was in serious condition as of last evening at St. Vincent's Hospital. Neil Nally, also of Engine 258, was stable.

The incident follows the death of two firefighters earlier this week that already had Bovis Lend Lease threatening to fire its subcontractor, John Galt Corp., a company with no experience in demolitions and alleged mafia connections. Joseph Graffagnino and Robert Beddia died in a seven-alarm blaze on the upper floors of the condemned building on Saturday after a broken standpipe failed to supply water for their hoses.

It is unclear how the fallout from the incidents this week could affect Bovis Lend Lease, a giant among its peers that is responsible for projects ranging from the new Bloomberg headquarters to the renovation of the Gramercy Park Hotel. The private company bills itself as the second largest construction management firm in America. It has operations in 40 countries, with headquarters in Australia. It was named contractor of the Year for 2007 by New York Construction.

In the past, the firm has been mostly unscathed by the occasional project gone awry.

"I think they are absolutely a top of the line company," a co-founder of the engineering firm Cantor Seinuk, Ysrael Seinuk, said. "I don't see why it should be damaging to their reputation. This is a company that has had a solid reputation for decades."

Bovis Lend Lease has overseen the construction of many New York City schools and is in line to work on Columbia University's planned expansion into Manhattanville in Harlem. Its triumphs include the AOL/Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle and the Bloomberg building at 731 Lexington Ave.

Last year, the firm's executives spearheaded Build Safe NYC, a project to bring uniform safety standards to the New York construction business.

Currently, Bovis Lend Lease and three other firms are organizing the construction of the PATH Station at ground zero whose cost at one point was estimated at $1.2 billion more than the original $2.2 billion estimate. The firm is also overseeing the World Trade Center Memorial, which was downsized after Bovis Lend Lease said last summer that the actual costs would be nearly double the original estimates.

It oversaw the renovation of Tweed Courthouse, where stones hanging above public sidewalks were found to be improperly attached to the façade, and was involved in projects for the School Construction Corp. in New Jersey, where the firm was among several accused in news reports of spending the school money on expensive office equipment.

In Newark, Bovis Lend Lease and a partner walked out on a $310 million contract to build an arena for the New Jersey Devils after the hockey team declined to pay the contractors more than the original estimated cost.

Before the deaths and injuries that occurred this week at the Deutsche Bank building, Bovis Lend Lease had presided over nine major safety incidents since 2002. There was one death, when a worker slipped and fell during the construction of the Bloomberg building in 2002, and several near misses.

The company's low point may have been the Ulster County Jail project in upstate New York. There, a state comptroller audit last summer disclosed a litany of problems that have landed Bovis Lend Lease in federal court. The jail project ran three years late, wracked up $30 million in extra costs, and ended with a structure that allowed male inmates a view into the quarters of the female inmates.

A spokeswoman for the comptroller's office said the audit found that much of the blame for the failures in that project fell on the shoulders of Bovis Lend Lease.

"When you look at these mega-companies, so much of the focus is on getting the job," an Ulster County legislator, Tracey Bartels, who heads a committee that is investigating the jail project, said.

She said she worried that Bovis Lend Lease had not sent its "A-team" to work on the project, and that when it noticed things were going wrong, made an effort "not to disclose just how bad it really was."

"It's pretty shocking when something's this mismanaged," Ms. Bartels said.

In the early stages of the Deutsche Bank demolition project, Bovis Lend Lease and its subcontractor made several demands for more money before they would continue dismantling the building, increasing the project's estimated costs to $177 million from the original estimate of $75 million. The negotiations won it such incentives as a $6 million guaranteed payment if it finished the project by December 31.

Once the demolition was under way, Bovis Lend Lease and John Galt Corp. were issued 19 violations for safety issues, including an incident where a steel pipe plummeted from a top floor into the roof of an adjacent firehouse.

Bovis Lend Lease did not respond to several requests for comment yesterday. The owner of the former Deutsche Bank Building, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, also did not comment yesterday.

Several industry experts, however, said the company is one of the best in the business, despite the difficult week at 130 Liberty St.
"This was one of the most complex and difficult projects that I've ever seen in the business," the president of the Building Trades Employers' Association, Louis Coletti, said.

Mr. Coletti said the problem of cost overruns in various public works projects that Bovis Lend Lease has worked on should be blamed on the public procurement process, which sets budgets for construction management firms while plans are still under development, before actual costs are determined.

As for the hiring of John Galt Corp., experts say there wasn't much choice.

"People weren't falling all over themselves to get this work. It's a very busy market now and contractors have a lot choice," the president of the New York Building Congress, Richard Anderson, said.

It took contractors about seven months to dismantle 14 floors to bring the building to its current height of 26 floors. Most work had stopped after the fire Saturday, but after yesterday's scaffolding incident, all work has now been halted.

On a pamphlet advertising its projects, Bovis Lend Lease includes its work on 130 Liberty St. with a footnote that says the project was completed in 2006 — an error perhaps arising from wishful thinking. Now, it seems unlikely that the job could be finished by the end of 2007.

"That is unfortunately the nature of the construction process — unforeseen things happen," Mr. Anderson said in an interview before the scaffolding incident. "The track record is the thing to keep in mind.