State officials get an eyeful of problems with facilities

Jeffrey Libby

Thursday, Aug. 30, 2001 | 11:24 a.m.

They came. They saw. They complained.

They were the members of the state Public Works Board, who normally meet in Carson City but met Wednesday in Boulder City and toured the Veterans Nursing Home and UNLV's Lied Library.

The home and library are two state buildings that have been plagued by construction delays, cost overruns, lingering defects and mounting legal trouble.

For a state board that oversees about $300 million in new construction each biennium, the problems were easy to pinpoint. The question was whether problems stemmed from design, construction or coordination flaws.

Lied Library rises 5 1/2 stories and puts 7 acres under one roof. The veterans home, when complete, would allow Nevada to join 46 other states that provide nursing homes for veterans.

But construction at the $19.3 million veterans home has been at a standstill since mid-June when the state fired the contractor for persistent delays. The state originally planned to open the home in May 2000. Costs are about $1 million over budget.

Though open since Jan. 8, Lied Library has its own share of problems. The contractor and others have filed claims against the state for payment of $6.5 million in cost overruns. The state has countered with a claim for $1 million to fix shoddy craftsmanship.

State legislators, including state Sen. Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, and Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, have criticized the Public Works Board for not doing enough to monitor projects. In the 2001 session, Perkins sponsored a bill, now law, that allows the governor to fire the manager of the Public Works Board for mismanagement.

On Wednesday afternoon, however, the state board focused largely on the mismanagement of others.

At the veterans home, board members inspected cracked dining room walls, toilets in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and doors with mismatched moulding that wouldn't shut.

With two lawsuits filed against the state by the contractor and an expected suit by the fired bonding company insuring the contractor, the defects came as no surprise.

"What I found startling was how close to completion the building is, and yet it's unobtainable," Sean Carnahan, chairman of the Public Works Board, said. "We just couldn't squeeze that last bit of performance out of the contractor."

The board voted before the tour to hire a new contractor by Sept. 7. After the tour, Carnahan said the 80,000 square-foot, 180-bed facility could open within three months.

At Lied Library, which opened a year late, Ward Patrick, deputy manager of the Public Works Board, pointed out undulations in the 3rd-floor study area that left the baseboard high-and-dry in several places. He also noted a sheen on walls that should not reflect light, and other areas that were too dark to read comfortably.

On the first floor, Special Counsel Kirk Williams, a Las Vegas attorney hired to represent the state in two construction lawsuits, bounced up and down on a soft section of floor he had found on a previous visit.

Carnahan asked if the inadequate support was a design or construction issue. Dan O'Brien, manager of the Public Works Board, said it could be a materials problem.

"We're looking at it," Williams said. "We'll find out who's to blame, because that's bad. It's enough to make a fat man paranoid."

Not everyone wanted to fix every flaw.

Daryl Privott, library building manager, said it might be better to learn from the mistakes and move on.

"If you just come into the building, it's beautiful. But if you get into the how, what, why and when, then it gets pretty ugly," Privott said. "Maybe in the future, you could consider a criteria other than the lowest bidder, like the most qualified. That would be my only suggestion."

Michal Fert, 22, visiting from Poland on a work-study program, had no suggestions for the building, only praise. Though he dislikes the Las Vegas Strip, he said the UNLV campus and the Lied Library in particular, reminded him of home.

"It's absolutely similar to the new library in Warsaw," he said. "Lots of windows and lots of metals. It's industrial, but in a fine way. And very practical."