Re “City Hall Called a ‘Qualified’ Winner in Fire Station Builder Dispute”
One of the speculative ironies in what has come to be known as the Fox Hills Fire Station Murder is that if the builder had completed the project within the contracted time, or close to it, Paul Bilodeau may not have been attacked and gunned down at the construction site 16 months after work began.
FEI Enterprises of Venice Boulevard, just east of Culver City, had agreed to put up Fire Station 3 in 12 months at a cost of $4 million, according to Public Works Director Charles Herbertson.
Delays are routine in the trades.
An easygoing public servant, Mr. Herbertson indicated that if 13 or 14 months, possibly 15 — not uncommon — had been required, it probably would have been acceptable.
“The job should have been completed by September of ’08, give or take a month or two with delays of various kinds,” Mr. Herbertson said.
“We gave them extensions, for weather and whatever else. That is normal. But they should have had the job completed by the end of 2008.”
When construction stretched into its third year on the calendar, the frustrated Mr. Herbertson lost patience and dismissed the company owned by Gabriel Fedida.
“We kind of kicked them off the job at the end of 2009,” the Public Works director said. “We told them, ‘We are going to pay you for what you have done up to this point. We are going to take over and complete the rest of the job ourselves. We will deduct from the contract the work you have not completed or that you have not done satisfactorily.’
“That is where the dispute comes from. One, we didn’t let them finish the job, but moreso, it is about what we deducted. They claimed things were done properly. We said ‘No, they weren’t, that they had to be redone.’
“In our final accounting for the project, we had something called liquidated damages in the contract where, for every day you are late, it’s a thousand dollars.
“We charged them over $300,000 in liquidated damages. They disputed that. They said, ‘No, it’s not our fault. It is your fault. You caused the delays.’
“We gave them credit for certain areas. We stopped the project after Paul Bilodeau was killed. Obviously we didn’t charge them for those days and other delays, due to the weather or changed conditions, we gave them credit for.
“Still, taking all of that into account, they were way over a year late.”
Mr. Fedida countered the city’s charges by seeking more than $1 million in back payments.
The city delicately announced yesterday that it had “won” an arbitration case from FEI. While City Hall was ordered to pay the construction company $100,000, FEI was denied more than 80 percent of the fiscal claims it had filed.
(To be continued)
