The Kiewit-Turner joint venture contracting team stopped work on Dec. 10 on a massive new U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital project in Aurora, Colo., just east of Denver,
The halt follows a联邦上诉委员会裁决前一天表示，弗吉尼亚州违反了与承包商的合同。
Kiewit-Turner filed a request in August to leave the project, after claiming the agency owes the contractor up to $100 million for unpaid work and materials.
The U.S. Civilian Board of Contract Appeals said in its Dec. 9 ruling that the VA had failed to agree on a design to build the project for $604 million, the agreed-upon price.
Instead, the agency has allowed design elements to go forward that are pushing the total cost above $1 billion, according to the ruling.
“Kiewit-Turner必须停止所有的工作项目。We will take all reasonable actions necessary to preserve and protect work currently in place and the materials on-site as we begin a safe and orderly demobilization from the project,” said Scott Cassels, Kiewit Corp. executive vice president, in a Dec. 9 letter to the VA.
A sign at the gate on Dec. 10 said the jobsite is “temporarily closed,” and joint venture officials met with subcontractors most of the day to plan an exit process.
The stoppage means the loss of nearly 1,400 jobs related to the project.
弗吉尼亚州最初表示，该医院将于2015年5月开放。Kiewit-Turner对该日期提出了质疑，目的是针对2017年初的最早开放。现在，该日期也不太可能。
Kiewit-Turner's conditions for moving forward with the project included immediate repayment of the $100 million in past costs, a transfer of project management from the VA to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and “a delivery model based on Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) cost-reimbursable principles,” Cassels' letter said.
Those conditions had not been met, K-T claimed, and the board agreed. The project was bid as an integrated design and construct contract, or IDc, similar to construction manager at risk, and established separate contracts for the contractor and the designers, with the intention of bringing the contractor into the design process early to help manage costs. It is the first time the VA has attempted to use the IDc delivery process.
In its ruling, however, the board said the VA “did not use the IDc mechanism properly right from the start,” pointing out that the design team—comprised of a joint venture of Skidmore Owings & Merrill, S.A. Miro, Cator Ruma and H+L Architects—had been under contract since January 2006 and working on design since November 2007.
K-T was not awarded the job until four years later, well after project design was beyond 50%, and “funding decisions had been made,” the board ruling said. It said the delay limited K-T’s ability to modify the design based on preconstruction analysis.
弗吉尼亚州已将手指指向设计团队，声称它创建了一个过于复杂的设计，该设计过于专注于美学，并误导了该机构是否可以在预算范围内构建设计。设计团队还要求离开该项目，但VA拒绝了其要求。
上诉委员会裁决说：“该机构未能提供可以在奖励的估计建设成本中构建的设计，因为它不能控制其设计师。”它说：“弗吉尼亚州并未与法律要求的真诚和公平交易的标准相提并论。”
同时，州和国家官员正在使用联邦政府以及可能是新的管理结构的储备金来重新启动该项目的方法。
美国参议员迈克尔·本内特（D-Colo。）在12月10日的声明中说：“我们的退伍军人等待了这家医院的时间太长。”
