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Let me set up a situation for you. Let’s say that your state is rebuilding a major stretch of highway. Let’s say this project will cost upwards of $600 million and will close parts of the main thoroughfare through your city for two years. Let’s also say that the contractors are incentivized to the tune of several million dollars to finish the work early. You’d think that the state would watch over the work fairly closely and inspect regularly, right? Not if you live in Missouri.

See, the Missouri Department of Transportation is too busy to regularly inspect the $535 million project and have left inspections up to the general contractor (or in this case a group of contractors). They would have to hire more inspectors is the argument for why MODOT has decided not to do the inspections itself. I’ll let the Project Manager speak for herself (via the St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

“This was following through with that same line of thinking [outsourcing everything],” said Lesley Hoffarth, project director for the Missouri Department of Transportation. “You are responsible for doing a quality job here, not MoDOT.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa. MODOT isn’t responsible for assuring that a quality job is being done on one of the most important highways in the state? That’s ludicrous.

I’m not saying that Gateway is doing a bad job or would intentionally shortcut items that are dangerous, but you’ve got to have oversight. I’m not a builder, but if I have build a house, I’d want an inspector after it is done to look things over to make sure everything is kosher. For this project, Gateway does the initial audit and then pays an outside inspector to do a follow up. That’s right the company that does the work is responsible for choosing and paying the outside firm that does inspections of their work. The auditor in me flashes a bright red light when I see that. Add that to the several million dollars to finish the job early and that’s an awful lot of incentive that could be abused.

When the inspections are done by the state, the results aren’t promising. The state has agreed to audit about 10% of the inspections. On the inspections they’ve done, the state has noted a failure rate of around 10% (10%!). The article says that most are paperwork snafus, but the auditor in me can’t imagine not testing more items when there is a failure rate of 10%.

So, what happens if five years down the road the highway starts to crumble? MODOT has to pay to repair it because the work only has a one-year warranty. The article notes that any guarantee is unusual for a MODOT contract. Again, I can’t believe that the contractors don’t have to warranty their work. What are we getting for our $535 million?

I have a feeling a lot of this has to do with anti-St. Louis sentiment that is a part of Missouri politics. Outstate politicians loathe the St. Louis area despite the fact that it and Kansas City are the main economic engines in the state. The current Governor (Matt Blunt who suprised everyone by not running for re-election) is from the Springfield area and had several anti-St. Louis ads run outstate during his bid for the Governorship (I heard them). He doesn’t want to spend more money than he has to in the area and this is one way to cut back funds in this district. But when it comes to public safety on a highway that has tens of thousands of motorists on it per day, I’d like to think a few extra engineers could be hired to make sure that everything is done correctly.