The V.I. Water and Power Authority Governing Board decided Thursday that a project management contract overseeing the utility's advanced metering infrastructure replacement needed more consideration.
WAPA customers have repeatedly complained of inaccurate and irregular energy bills, which the utility has attributed to old or malfunctioning meters. In February, the board approved a four-year, $30 million contract with Itron to replace the territory's AMI system.
"This contract basically is to augment our team to be able to make sure that what we have contracted with Itron - and the way it has been designed and laid out -- is the way it's installed and implemented, and that it works in the manner that we expect it to work," WAPA Chief Executive Officer Karl Knight explained Thursday. The project is 98 percent federally funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Mechanical engineer Star Matthew said the utility's selection committee landed on Witt O'Brien's and also considered bids from 4Liberty, Utilities One and Solved Engineering, which was disqualified for submitting an incomplete proposal.
WAPA evaluated the cost of its AMI replacement at $7,510,000, and 4Liberty quoted $3.42 million -- less than half of WAPA's estimate. Matthew said their proposal was strong with respect to the terms of the utility's request for proposals but that the cost discrepancy "raised concerns that they may have overlooked key elements, resulting in unanticipated costs once the project commences."
Utility One's bid was dramatically lower at $200,000, but Matthew said their proposal did not cover the full timeline of the project and noted that the company's past experience was in water, not electric, meter deployment.
Witt O'Brien's bid was closer to $9 million, including nearly $1.34 million in travel costs.
"Overall, they had the most combined experience in project management and AMI subject matter," she said. The company received a final evaluation score of 450, 11 points more than 4Liberty.
Board Secretary Juanita Young pressed Matthew on whether Witt O'Brien's past experience with AMI deployment belonged to them or to their partnering firm, Z2Solutions. Matthew said both have project management experience and that Z2Solutions had worked in advanced metering infrastructure.
Witt O'Brien's "didn't specify any AMI projects that they have done -- just project management in general," Matthew said.
Young asked if the utility could find out from Witt O'Brien's directly.
"My concern here is that they've chosen a partner that really is the one that has the skillset and has the history and has the street cred, and they're just kind of tagging along for the ride," she said.
At that point, Knight jumped in to note that Witt O'Brien's had a long history of partnering with subject matter experts to tackle disaster recovery and emergency management projects in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
"So a lot of the subject matter expertise does rely on their partners, but of course, they do bring to the table some of the general experience of navigating federal funding -- and just the overall management -- and navigating the landscape in the U.S. Virgin Islands," he said. "They've had a presence here going back to Irma and Maria, and they've -- when you look at their team, a lot of this portion of their team is actually based out of the U.S. Virgin Islands, so they have quite a bit of knowledge of the landscape."
At least one former government official has intimated that Witt O'Brien's might be a little too familiar with the landscape of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Darin Richardson, former chief operating officer for the V.I. Housing Finance Authority, was convicted in March in part for his role in awarding a lumber management contract to Island Services Group. Among the evidence the government presented at trial was a memo written by a U.S. Housing and Urban Development special agent following an interview with Richardson.
Asked during the interview about ISG's inflated billings, Richardson said it's "the same thing that Witt O'Brien [sic] does," according to the memo. At one point during the interview, Richardson reportedly said that the only time he felt pressured to do something he was uncomfortable with during his tenure at VIHFA was when he was asked to sign off on a Witt O'Brien's work plan. According to the HUD special agent's notes, the request was made by V.I. Disaster Recovery Office Director Adrienne Williams-Octalien, who allegedly told Richardson that Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. would be upset if he refused to sign. Richardson went on to describe Witt O'Brien's as "controlling" everything and said they were benefiting from the territory's federal disaster recovery funding.
"WOB is being overpaid for its services or work that could easily be done by USVI departmental employees," the special agent wrote, adding that Richardson "thinks this is incompetence on the part of USVI executive leadership."
The board's decision to table the matter came after it approved two other contracts related to the utility's AMI replacement. The first was a $427,350 purchase of 140 composite poles from Trideo and the second was a $242,500 cost increase with Barkley Technologies.
The board also approved two federally funded waterline replacement contracts.
One was a more than $2.72 million contract with Island Road Corp. to rehabilitate the waterline in Mahogany Estate on St. Thomas. Mechanical engineer La'ron Henry said the project entails replacing 2,705 feet of 60-year-old iron pipe with PVC. The rehabilitation is funded through a Drinking Water Capital Improvement Grant administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the V.I. Department of Planning and Natural Resources. The utility is also hiring a grant-funded archaeologist to ensure that a historic grave site just outside the project's boundary limit remains undisturbed.
A $3,177,800 waterline rehabilitation project in Blackbeard Hill -- also with Island Roads Corp. -- was also approved. That project will involve replacing 3,240 feet of ductile iron pipe with PVC.
"That pipeline was installed in 1950," Knight noted. "It's 75 years old -- older than any employee currently employed by the Water and Power Authority. So when people ask about water and ask about water loss in the system, it's because I still have pipes that go back to the 1950s that we're now changing out. So it's not rocket science, it's not Seven Seas, it's not anything that we're doing. It's the age of the system, and the only solution is to replace these aging pipes."
Each waterline services approximately one hundred WAPA customers and both projects are expected to take half a year.
The board also approved a no-cost time extension to its contract with Arcadis for consultant work related to an EPA consent decree mandating WAPA's compliance with federal air pollution and control requirements at the St. Thomas power plant. The contract was set to expire on May 30 but was extended to Nov. 30.
Project Management Director Maxwell George said WAPA still has around $150,000 left to spend on the contract and that Arcadis's services will be needed during upcoming negotiations with the U.S. Justice Department and the EPA.
"If things go well, which I'm confident that things are going to go well with the EPA and DOJ in the coming weeks, then we would come in below that one-fifty [thousand]," he said. "If, for whatever reason, EPA and DOJ feel that we need to extend that and show, demonstrate ... more compliance with anything -- currently I don't see anything outstanding but ... I can't speak for the agencies -- then I may be back here again in a couple of months asking you for more money. I just have to be straightforward."