Sienna Jackson / Roundup
The Los Angeles Times recently published a six-part expose on mismanagement and misspending within the taxpayer-funded $6 billion BuildLACCD program – but little coverage was given to Pierce College.
A Roundup investigation of the recently completed $57 million Center for the Sciences project, dedicated in October 2010, uncovered unaddressed flaws in the construction process and within the center itself.
The Pierce Center for the Sciences (CFS), funded with Proposition A/AA and Measure J bond funds, is over 100,000 square feet, and took nearly ten years to complete.
A Roundup reporter made contact with a member of the college faculty who currently works within the center. The faculty member requested to remain unidentified in this article.
“They wouldn’t like it if they found out I spoke with you,” he said, referring to the college administration.
On Monday, March 14, a Roundup reporter was shown a particular room in the new center that is currently unusable.
The ‘large animal dissection room’ in the Veterinary Technology building, room 91101, is meant to serve the very purpose its name suggests.
The room was intended as a place for veterinary students to examine large animal cadavers, complete with a heavy steel necropsy table for dissections.
It was touted by BuildLACCD as a highlight of the reinvigorated Department of Agriculture & Natural Resources at Pierce.
Nearly a year since the end of construction for the CFS, the room is not used for student instruction; instead it is used as a storage closet.
Upon entering the room, one is immediately confronted with the acrid smell of preservatives. There is no ventilation for the pressboard cabinets, which store cadavers kept in plastic containers and bags.
The necropsy table has no drain to steer corpse fluids away from students, or a unit to collect the waste.
Small circular grates lie in the floor, meant to drain blood and feces directly to the sewer system – an illegal setup under state and federal law, according to the faculty member.
It is unclear who is responsible for technically completing this project.
“The issues are complex, nobody knows the ultimate plan,” said chemistry department chair Isidore Goodman. “It was a long and very complicated process, and I think we came out with a very beautiful building. Are there issues with the building? Yes.”
The problems within the center that faculty discovered upon moving in included doors mounted backwards, missing lights, tables with inexplicable holes in them and improperly installed bathroom fixtures.
The faculty offices are missing window treatments, and many professors have had to tape paper to the windows to block out the sun.
“Just little construction things that had to be completed,” said William Duxler, chair of the physics department.
Such deficiencies are covered under a $40,250,000 contract with the center’s general contractor, Sinanian Development.
Under that contract, any corrections to the center will be covered under a general one-year warranty, according to David Niemerow, an affiliate with BuildLACCD.
That deadline is roughly four months away. If the corrections aren’t made by then, the college will have to find another way to pay for them, said faculty.
Kathleen Burke-Kelly, president of the college, said that the issue of warranty hadn’t been resolved before she left Pierce to fill-in the president’s post at Los Angeles Mission College.
“We had been in meetings, but we did not come to a decision,” said Burke-Kelly by phone from her office at Mission. “I don’t know anything more. I haven’t been on campus for several weeks.”
The large animal dissection room is not covered under the warranty.
David Tsao, college project manager (CPM) at Swinerton, said that he scheduled weekly meetings with Burke-Kelly during construction.
When asked about the large animal dissection room, Tsao said he didn’t know of it. “I was not the lead in charge of that project, I do not know all of the rooms by name. That project was finished some time ago,” he said.
Tsao has been the CPM at Pierce for eight years.
An inspector of record who oversaw the bulk of the construction had many concerns with the Veterinary Technology building.
“It’s a mini operating room,” he said of the dissection lab. “There were things that went on in that room that precluded anyone from using it. I didn’t think there was adequate ventilation, and it wasn’t resolved when I left the project.”
The inspector said that only Swinerton Management & Consulting – the firm tasked with overseeing construction – could communicate with the college and the district during the build, leaving the inspector unable to voice his concerns to the school.
“Have you ever heard of the story of the king who had no clothes? It was exactly like that, the king believed he was beautiful because he had no other reference,” said the inspector.
When pressed for further information on the build, the inspector of record confided that much of his documentation of the project is unaccounted for.
“My paper records are gone. Swinerton took them and turned them over to the new architect. They’re supposed to be with the college, with plant facilities, but I really don’t know. That information disappeared,” he said.
Calls to director of plant facilities Paul Nieman regarding the records went unreturned.
During the final stages of construction, builders refer to what is called a ‘punch list,’ a list of items that need to be completed by the general contractor before final payments can be made – in this case, the payment of $40,250,000 to Sinanian.
The latest version of the CFS punch list, provided by Swinerton, includes only one item concerning the large animal dissection room, installing PVC pipes to the cabinets, but doesn’t include any mention of drainage or the necropsy table.
“The way they get away with things like this,” said the inspector. “Is because of a loophole in the system – when you have a building that’s structurally complete, things like the dissection room can be written off. On paper, they’re just empty rooms.”
http://www.laccdbuildsgreen.org/mediacenter/index.php?item=129
The BuildLACCD press release on the center, with mention of the dissection room
Hallway opening to the court yard of Center for Sciences building in PIerce College. (John Gutierrez 2011)