Court Construction Team Scrutizined Over Safety

Members of the Fredericksburg City Council will likely vote on three measures tonight necessary to move forward with the construction of a new city courthouse.

First, they will hold a public hearing on the issuance of $38.7 million in bonds to fund the project. Later in the meeting, they will also likely hold the first vote to approve a contract with First Choice Public-Private Partners to develop the new court facility. They will also likely vote on a measure approving the purchase of 707 Princess Anne Street to make way for the new building.
The contract  with First Choice lays out a $31.8 million contract cost limit to build the new court facilities. This is down from an initial proposed cost limit of $34,975,831. The cost reductions were achieved by farming out costs for line items like property acquisition for 707 Princess Anne Street and fixtures and furniture to other contractors down the line.

During the evaluation of proposed court facilities, Fredericksburg officials expressed concerns over First Choice's safety record.

Newly released responses to confidential questions submitted to First Choice Public Private Partners during the City Council's evaluation of proposed court facility concepts show that the design-build team was cited for eight OSHA workplace safety violations in the last three years.

None of the incidents required medical attention, but they did cause a total of eight lost workdays and three restricted workdays. These incidents also caused the team's Workers Compensation insurance premiums to rise in that time.

It was the first question listed in the confidential section of the revised request for proposals submitted back in August, and began with "the saftey record of the team is questionable" before asking the team to detail management changes to prevent future violations.

According to First Choice's responses, at a worksite in Farmille the team received four citations, labeled as "other than serious" by OSHA, for violations of housekeeping, lighting, first aid, and electrical equipment regulations.

The team received the more serious citations  at worksites in West Point and Madison Heights.

At West Point, the team was cited once for a missing scaffold toe board and having an open excavation pit without a warning barrier. Both were initially classified as serious violations, but the toe board citation was vacated and the excavation pit violation was reduced to other than serious.

At Madison Heights, the team was cited for using incorrect warning tape for a crane barrier and for having a load suspended over an employee. Here too, both violations were initially classified as serious, but the crane barrier violation was vacated, and the load suspended of the employee was reduced to other than serious.

According to First Choice's response to the concerns of city officials,  to avoid future incidents English Construction had to change management policies to address the citations.

"In December of 2009, the management of English's Corporate Safety and Workman's Compensation program was placed under the leadership of a five member committee comprised of junior and senior company executives," reads the response. "That committee established a policy of providing safety coordinators on every job to recognize, monitor and implement correct safety measures for daily project activities."

The result, they say, has led to a reduction in lost workday cases and accidents in 2010 and 2011.