Order It & They Will Build It

MWH sold the city Bio-solids processing equipment for $14 million...

But wait, that’s not all you get, as this fiasco gets even better….

Would Martha Stewart order and pay for furniture to be delivered to a house that was not yet built?

The equipment was ordered, paid for with city money, then shipped to the Southwest reclamation plant.

But, a funny thing happened on the way to the new Biosolids Building…. it wasn’t built or funded yet.

So there the $14 million worth of equipment sits, out in the open, loaded on pallets...

wrapped in plastic, waiting for a building to be constructed, that funding was never approved for.

That might be the end of our story, except for the fact that MWH wanted $40 million...

to build a 45 ft tall building with six ft CBS walls, with the remainder finished in metal.

Some people in the city finance dept and a certain young business manager thought that $40 million might be a bit on the high side.

So MWH struck out certain items and came back at $32 million, sounds good eh?

To Bin or not to Bin… MWH eliminated several items, the most important is called as a bin activator.

Bin Laden or Activator? Biosolids come in three forms, final pellets, liquid or cake sludge, preprocessing each is a viable source for revenue.

A bin activator facilitates trucks loaded with cake sludge from other county’s plants to dump their loads at the plant. We take their sludge and turn in into money.

Don’t let them eat cake… Alas, no bin, no revenue from Cake sludge, and that’s a 33% revenue loss on the operation.

But that’s not all folks… this MWH offer gets even better…

In early 2007, Bonita Springs finished a new bio solids building (all CBS construction...

which was almost the same height with half the square footage and half the equipment (1 train, 1 dryer).

Interesting enough, the equipment came from the same manufacturer chosen for the Cape. Can you guess how much BS paid for half the equipment?

$2 million, not half of $14 million. How about the building cost, and mechanical installation of the equipment?

Can you say another $4 million? Add another $1 million for incidentals and you get a grand total of $7 million out the door.

If you DOUBLED this price to $14 million for twice the building and equipment, you get what the Cape paid for the equipment alone.

No building with MWH, that’s an EXTRA $30 million without our buddy Bin.

Out the door, $14 million vs $47 million, sounds like MWH’s standard 3X markup strikes the good citizens of the Cape again.

Who approved ordering equipment for delivery to a building that was unapproved? Where was the cost oversight on this project?

The Cape could manage this project and do the build out internally for around $13 million...

then pay engineers $2 million for the mechanical install of the bio solids equipment.

Oh, and one other thing, the BS building did not have a bin activator either.

Incidentally, the equipment vendor is now threatening to void the three-year warranty.

MWH is trying to use the warranty ploy as a way to coerce the city into approving their plans.

The city could still do for $15 million what MWH is essentially attempting to extort out of them for $42 million.

Coercion and extortion, sounds like the Soprano’s do run this town.