St. Croix River Crossing

[Mdcastle]

Spending $6 million extra because a contract isn't politically correct enough is bizarre, but in today's political climate in this state, at least understandable. This now is bizarre and I can't understand what is alleged to be going on, much less what is happening that they're not talking about.

[David Greene]

Spending $6 million extra because a contract isn't politically correct enough

What the what?

[VAStationDude]

He doesn't know the definition of politically correct.

[Mdcastle]

Spending $6 million extra because a contract isn't politically correct enough

What the what?

The contract for the Minnesota approach road was awarded to Ames/Lunda for $58 million, instead of McCrosson for $52 million, because McCrosson had too many of the subs owned by white males.

[Tiller]

Spending $6 million extra because a contract isn't politically correct enough

What the what?

The contract for the Minnesota approach road was awarded to Ames/Lunda for $58 million, instead of McCrosson for $52 million, because McCrosson had too many of the subs owned by white males.

Well obviously that isn't the case, because the global Kyriarchic cabal would never allow a person of color to escape their capitalistic bondage! This is just them internalizing the Kyriarchy! #FreeTheNipple #YesAllCISmen

[Silophant]

From 2.5 years ago:

Mn/DOT decided to take the second lowest bidder for the Minnesota approach roads (which is 100% Minnesota money) because the lowest bidder didn't employ enough women and minorities. This act of political correctness will cost $6 million.

And while we're complaining about a $6M difference, the project itself costs MN/WI/US taxpayers $700M for 16,000 people a day to save 5-10 minutes.

Adding <1% to the cost of this boondoggle to help women and minorities is fine by me.

[MNdible]

What if it only helps a couple of already wealthy women and/or minorities?

[MNdible]

Oh, and it probably also helps their white male co-owners.

[Silophant]

Probably it does. Who cares? Don't throw good money after bad, sure, but the time to be cost-conscious was sometime before committing to building a bridge with 5x the capacity of the existing crossing, when VMT is declining, not increasing.

[LakeCharles]

Yeah I feel like the big story here is the $694 million wasted on this bridge, not the $6 million.

[Wedgeguy]

Especially when this bridge has a life span of 10 years, 50years, maybe 100 years. Funny how the longer we put off doing something the higher the price tag is in the future. In the future no one will travel across to Wisconsin and ever use this bridge right???

[LakeCharles]

Especially when this bridge has a life span of 10 years, 50years, maybe 100 years. Funny how the longer we put off doing something the higher the price tag is in the future. In the future no one will travel across to Wisconsin and ever use this bridge right???

What? Of course people will use this bridge. If I built a half-billion dollar bridge across the Mississippi from St. Clair Ave to 38th St., people would use it. Why drive 2 miles out of my way to get from the Tap to the Riverview? And it would last maybe 100 years! And if we waited, it would cost more in the future. Let's get this built quick before it costs a billion dollars in 2030.

[mulad]

I think the point folks are aiming for is that a smaller bridge of relatively standard design, lower down toward the water surface, and closer to the center of Stillwater, probably could have been built for something on the order of $50 to $200 million, rather than a blufftop-to-blufftop freeway span using a unique design and correspondingly complex construction techniques.

[MNdible]

Probably it does. Who cares? Don't throw good money after bad, sure, but the time to be cost-conscious was sometime before committing to building a bridge with 5x the capacity of the existing crossing, when VMT is declining, not increasing.

Except that we go through this exact same tortured process on every project receiving public money. It's not just $6m on this project, and in my eyes, it's not really even the money. It's that we're using a program that doesn't give us the results we're striving for, meanwhile distorting the market and enriching a few who are smart/lucky/cynical enough to game the system.

If you're really interested in improving the lot of minority and women in the construction fields, the real impact is in increasing the number of them working in the trades*, not by picking a handful of winners and funneling public money to them.

*And there are programs that do this, I'm just arguing that they're much more beneficial and actually have something close to the desired effect.

[David Greene]

I can't really argue with anything you've said, MNdible. Work hours requirements are much more important the DBE requirements.

[nate]

My company does federal and state work, and I can report similar frustrations as MNdible.

Here's how it works: my company gets asked to partner with operators that exist solely because of their disadvantaged status. The partnership looks like this: my (large, sophisticated, well-connected, white-male owned) company does the work; the disadvantaged business puts their name on the deliverables. We get a major chunk of the fee and most of the liability, they get the rest of the fee for adding essentially zero value. I think my company generally avoids such partnerships if at all possible, even at the cost of losing some public work.

To me, the problem with the current system is that disadvantaged companies are incentivized primarily to use their status to win work and do as little as possible. Which is a good deal for their owners, but as a result they do not gain the scale, sophistication, or connections necessary to compete with established companies on their own terms - which I believe is the intent of the rules.

To be fair, there are requirements to share meaningful work to the disadvantaged business, but think from the perspective of the main contractor: I have major liability concerns with the job. Does it make sense hand over the technically complex portions of the work that might get my ass sued down the line, or will I divide it in such a way that the disadvantaged business gets the easy stuff? In my experience the latter seems to happen pretty often.

[David Greene]

I can totally believe scenarios like this. The question is, how do we do better? It's absolutely true that there's an old boys network that is nearly impossible to break into. It's the same in many other specialized industries. How do we more effectively open opportunity to new players? In the end we do want a larger number of contractors able to bid for work and equity-wise, most of those new contractors should be minority- and/or women-owned.

I wonder if some kind of partnership/mentorship model would work better, the goal being to get the DBEs the experience they need to strike out on their own. The real goal is to get new players into the market, right? So do results evaluation on that in addition to number of contracts/dollar value.

Again, I don't know a lot about this stuff, I'm just brainstorming.

[BoredAgain]

[quote="David Greene"The question is, how do we do better? It's absolutely true that there's an old boys network that is nearly impossible to break into. It's the same in many other specialized industries. How do we more effectively open opportunity to new players? In the end we do want a larger number of contractors able to bid for work and equity-wise, most of those new contractors should be minority- and/or women-owned.
.[/quote]

Why not require a percentage of minorities and women in the companies project team rather than minority owned? You would need to check on the team member roles to avoid all secretaries and janitorial (to be a bit racist and sexist). This would encourage larger firms to hire diverse teams that would grow with the company or strike out on their own to create more minority owned companies.

Potential problem: The "affirmative action hire" internal discrimination issues.

[Mdcastle]

Well, if the point is to teach DBEs how to compete as opposed to just handing them free money, isn't manipulating the bidding environment counterproductive to that (and if we just wanted to send them free money, just cutting a check for the profit to all the extra DBEs that Ames/Lunda hired would be a lot cheaper).

Anyway, a major milestone, the first cable installed. And everytime I'm out there at least one motorist honks because they think I shouldn't be walking or riding a bicycle on the shoulder of the road.
IMG_8136 by North Star Highways, on Flickr

[Mdcastle]

And construction winding down for the year. After the barge left Grey Cloud Island it got too cold to set any more sections so several sections were sent back. The work that will continue over the winter is pouring the poured in place transition sections and finishing up the piers.
IMG_8408 by North Star Highways, on Flickr
It was too cold to bicycle around the area, but I added the final set of pictures for the year from the areas I could access by car and foot.