On November 10, 2020 the consulting firm of Moss Adams presented their findings from a mid-program assessment of Jeffco’s Capital Improvement Program. The report was not good.
Included in the report were areas that should raise serious concerns among the Superintendent, Board Members, District Staff and Jeffco taxpayers.
One of the areas that Moss Adams looked at was Contractor Procurement, essentially how contractors were chosen.
Moss Adams wrote:
… however, bid tabulations or evaluations for the selection and award of the projects were not available. Additionally, documentation was not available to demonstrate the selection process and awarding of professional services from the prequalified list of consultants. We were unable to determine whether or how the selection and award process for District projects included the factors outlined in the District’s policies and procedures.
Essentially, Moss Adams is saying that there is no record of how winning bidders were chosen. Think about that for a minute. Of the 6 projects Moss Adams looked at from a Contractor Procurement perspective (Appendix H), only one was awarded to the low bidder and that there is zero documentation on why low bidders for the other 5 projects weren’t chosen. In addition, 5 of the bidders who were selected were subsequently issued change orders, the minimum value of which was over $6.5M.
This is just beyond belief. It is certainly not hard to imagine scenarios where a procedureless system like this can, and maybe has been abused.
Something similar happened with regards to Architect Procurement.
Moss Adams looked at 8 projects with respect to Architect Procurement (Appendix I). None of the 8 provided a proposal, with Moss Adams stating that these contracts appeared to be “sole source procurement”. How can anyone think that there is not the opportunity for fraud, favoritism or over pricing with so many sole source contracts? And, not to be outdone by the Contractor Procurement, all of these architecture firms were issued substantial change orders too.
This is not the way to run a capital program. The optics are that there is way too much opportunity for fraud and corruption.
These examples are only the tip of the iceberg if you take the time to critically read the full Moss Adams report, not just the cherry picked and sanitized sound bites District staff presented to the Board.
The program is out of control, not just from a cost perspective, but also from management and fraud mitigating perspectives.
Jeffco taxpayers and voters deserve nothing less than full Financial and Performance audits. Taxpayers were promised that Jeffco would be good stewards of their money. That isn’t happening.