Last December, the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals, a tribunal within the General Services Administration, found that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was in material breach of a contract with Kiewit-Turner—a joint venture between Kiewit Building Group and Turner Construction—on the massive Denver VA Medical Center project in Aurora, Colo.
That project was already years behind schedule and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. Upon that ruling, Kiewit-Turner—which has been on this project since 2010, when it broke ground—stopped work on that project, which at the time was somewhere between 40% and 60% complete, according to the Denver Business Journal. Work resumed just before Christmas only after VA and Kiewit-Turner signed a $234 million bridge-loan agreement.
The Board stated in its decision that the VA had repeatedly failed to provide a design for the hospital that could be built for the original agreed-upon price of $604 million. The VA, according to the Board, also disregarded cost-cutting suggestions and warnings that the project’s ambitions would greatly exceed its budget.
In fact, in the spring of 2013, The Government Accountability Office (GAO) had issued a report that found the Aurora project and three other VA projects were all drastically over budget and behind schedule.
The 182-bed medical center was supposed to be completed early this year. Kiewit-Turner, in June 2013, estimated that the construction cost would actually be $1.085 billion. (At that time, Glenn Haggstrom, who managed VA’s construction projects, continued to insist the hospital could be brought in for its original budget.)
The VA’s Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson admitted in July that his agency could not produce a line-by-line accounting that would explain the overspending.
In March, Colorado’s congressional delegation requested that the Senate Veterans Affairs committee conduct a field visit to the medical center, which was planned to serve 82,700 vets. The fear was that work would stop again without Congressional approval for the appropriation of additional funds.
Now, the project’s completion date has been pushed back to Jan. 23, 2018, and the total cost is now expected to reach at least $1.67 billion. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers late last month awarded the construction team a $571 million contract to finish the job.
Congress had authorized up to $625 million in additional spending for this project in September, but not without strings attached, according to news reports. That approval stripped the VA of its authority on any future construction project over $100 million, which essentially would prevent the department from getting involved in hospital construction again.
The Army Corps of Engineers will henceforth serve as the VA”s construction agent on several products worth about $3.6 billion.
"We must make sure that this never happens again and fortunately, a key reform was passed along with funding. The VA is out of the hospital building business," stated U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Aurora). Coffman told Stars and Stripes that he was disappointed that the VA might not release the results of one of its internal investigations into what went wrong until next year.
Related Stories
| Oct 13, 2010
Prefab Trailblazer
The $137 million, 12-story, 500,000-sf Miami Valley Hospital cardiac center, Dayton, Ohio, is the first major hospital project in the U.S. to have made extensive use of prefabricated components in its design and construction.
| Oct 13, 2010
Hospital tower gets modern makeover
The Wellmont Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport, Tenn., expanded its D unit, a project that includes a 243,443-sf addition with a 12-room operating suite, a 36-bed intensive care unit, and an enlarged emergency department.
| Oct 13, 2010
Hospital and clinic join for better patient care
Designed by HGA Architects and Engineers, the two-story Owatonna (Minn.) Hospital, owned by Allina Hospitals and Clinics, connects to a newly expanded clinic owned by Mayo Health System to create a single facility for inpatient and outpatient care.
| Oct 13, 2010
Maryland replacement hospital expands care, changes name
The new $120 million Meritus Regional Medical Center in Hagerstown, Md., has 267 beds, 17 operating rooms with high-resolution video screens, a special care level II nursery, and an emergency room with 53 treatment rooms, two trauma rooms, and two cardiac rooms.
| Oct 13, 2010
Cancer hospital plans fifth treatment center
Construction is set to start in December on the new Cancer Treatment Centers of America’s $55 million hospital in Newnan, Ga. The 225,000-sf facility will have 25 universal inpatient beds, two linear accelerator vaults, an HDR/Brachy therapy vault, and a radiology and imaging unit.
| Oct 13, 2010
New health center to focus on education and awareness
Construction is getting pumped up at the new Anschutz Health and Wellness Center at the University of Colorado, Denver. The four-story, 94,000-sf building will focus on healthy lifestyles and disease prevention.
| Oct 13, 2010
Community center under way in NYC seeks LEED Platinum
A curving, 550-foot-long glass arcade dubbed the “Wall of Light” is the standout architectural and sustainable feature of the Battery Park City Community Center, a 60,000-sf complex located in a two-tower residential Lower Manhattan complex. Hanrahan Meyers Architects designed the glass arcade to act as a passive energy system, bringing natural light into all interior spaces.
| Oct 12, 2010
Holton Career and Resource Center, Durham, N.C.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. Early in the current decade, violence within the community of Northeast Central Durham, N.C., escalated to the point where school safety officers at Holton Junior High School feared for their own safety. The school eventually closed and the property sat vacant for five years.
| Sep 13, 2010
Palos Community Hospital plans upgrades, expansion
A laboratory, pharmacy, critical care unit, perioperative services, and 192 new patient beds are part of Palos (Ill.) Community Hospital's 617,500-sf expansion and renovation.
| Sep 13, 2010
China's largest single-phase hospital planned for Shanghai
RTKL's Los Angles office is designing the Shanghai Changzheng New Pudong Hospital, which will be the largest new hospital built in China in a single phase.
