AURORA | A week after a dramatic shutdown of the Aurora VA hospital construction site, a temporary deal was struck Wednesday among all parties and building is expected to resume as early as next week.
“The situation we find ourselves in is unacceptable to me, Secretary Bob McDonald, to our veterans,” Congressman Mike Coffman, R-Aurora said at a press conference at the VA construction site Dec. 17. “It’s not acceptable to the American people.”
Kiewit-Turner created a commotion Dec. 9 when they immediately stopped work on the over-budget, delayed hospital, citing a federal board of appeals ruling that the VA had breached its contract. Kiewit-Turner says it abandoned the troubled project after the cost ballooned to as much as $1 billion when the hospital was only budgeted for $604 million.
The U.S. Civilian Board of Contract Appeals said the VA has not produced a design that could be built under the $604-million contract. The board also found that the VA didn’t have sufficient funds to pay for construction of the entire project and had no plans to ask for more money.
Since that time, Colorado’s Congressional delegation has been struggling to negotiate a deal between the VA and Kiewit to resume the stalled project while 1,400 construction workers were put out of a job before the holidays.
The temporary deal will bring the Army Corps of Engineers into the project immediately, but many details of how the project will ultimately be paid for were unknown. At this point, it will be the Army Corps and Kiewit-Turner who will negotiate a new contract to complete the hospital. Kiewit officials said they will contact subcontractors immediately to let them know when to report back to work.
At this point, officials said the hospital project is about half done, but they estimated they could open the replacement hospital in 2017 if there aren’t more delays.
It was unclear how the rest of the hospital construction will be funded. The project has funding authorization for $750 million, and more than $500 million has been spent. There still is no firm total of what the project will cost as designed, or whether the top price might be reduced with final design changes.
Officials said some construction workers will return to the site on Monday.
On Tuesday, Coffman said in a statement the VA’s Major Construction Account, which has balance of $1.985 billion, could be used to complete the new medical center. The account can be used to pay for construction projects that have a minimum price tag of $10 million, according to Coffman. He added that $562 million approved for VA capital construction in 2015 as part of the omnibus appropriations bill could also be used for the Aurora hospital.
“The Aurora hospital was originally budgeted to not exceed $800 million but will certainly cost significantly more than that to complete,” he said in the statement.
Coffman crafted legislation that passed the House in September to have the Army Corps oversee all national VA construction projects, following a report that some medical centers take three years longer to complete than estimated and cost an extra $366 million per project.
Coffman said this week he’s more insistent than ever that the Army Corps step into current and future VA projects. That measure still awaits Senate action, but Coffman said the Army Corps would be assigned to oversee the Aurora Hospital even if the bill is not approved.
A report by the Government Accountability Office last year found that at least four medical centers were behind schedule and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. The hospitals are in Las Vegas, Denver, New Orleans and Orlando, Florida. The House bill would require the VA to appoint a project manager from the Army Corp of Engineers to oversee construction projects that cost more than $60 million.
The new Aurora VA Hospital is slated to be 1.2 million square feet with nine buildings that will include two inpatient facilities, three clinics, as well as a research facility and an energy center with solar panels. There are plans for three parking structures, one which will be located underground next to the outpatient buildings.
A lot of my construction friends are glad the project will resume. I’m curious how many workers have applied for unemployment insurance.
They would all be entitled to draw it, or at the very least accomplish their one-week-waiting period.
We still remember when the U.S. Army offered the VA the opportunity to take over ownership of the ENTIRE Fitzsimons AMC property, before the post closed, for next to $0. Naturally the VA said no, they had no plans to move from their existing facilities and there was no need to have any real estate whatsoever for a replacement VA medical center. But we are older and have not been on active duty since 2001.