Chronic delays and concerns about shoddy workmanship by the company building a fleet of double-decker coaches for the MBTA’s commuter rail line have prompted executives to threaten cancellation of the $190 million contract and possibly seek a new firm for the work.
In a letter obtained by the Globe, state transit officials express deep frustration with the South Korean company building the 75 rail cars, Hyundai Rotem, declaring that “this seriously troubled procurement is at a point of crisis.”
Comments
Lack of oversight, inauspicious contracts, poor attention to detail, anyone associate this with another DOT project gone bad (read Big Dig)?
At the very least, it will cost the State time and money. Neither of which it can really afford. Bad decision-making, poor planning, try to save a buck up front backfires in your face. Plus it really DOES stink of nepotism.
Some of the blame rests with us. We want cost savings. We want low taxes and cheap fares. We insist on a money trumps all. Then when all goes wrong we are all too willing to blame those carrying out our wishes attributing all.sorts malicious incompetent intent to others. Why would we send work and money like this outside of the US? European and some Japanese builders have reputations for quality as well.
However I will agree with others that will say it could have even managed better because this kind of action should have even taken in 2010 when it was obvious that things were in deep trouble.
This has nothing to do with taxes - it's incompetence at the "T". Their bid specification should have required that the manufacturer had built rail cars before. Same thing happened on the Green line in the 1970s. The cars were built by Boeing.
This contract was for 190M - amortized over how many years - say 20 - so the cost to the agency is maybe 10M a year - the total budget of the "T" is 1.5B - so the yearly cost of these cars are .67% of their budget.
Good story but there is a lot more to this story that needs to be reported. Two questions that are unanswered here: how much money has the T committed to this already and, if they terminated the deal, what would be the loss? Also, the father/son duo goes unnamed. Why and who is it?
It is clearly a case of "you get what you pay for," but it's surprising and disappointing the T management wasn't ready to pounce on this much sooner. The contract should have had significant penalties for failing to deliver on time and for failing to deliver quality products. Did it?
These are excellent questions. Let me add two more, the first of which is rhetorical. First, has the T learned from its earlier contractual disasters--e.g. the Breda Green Line cars and the electronic fare collection systems--both of which were characterized by the lack of even a modicum of due diligence, the choice of a bidder without a solid record of relevant achievement on the equipment in question, and the lack or penalties or lack of enforcement of those penalties for delays and defective eqiuipment. Secondly, the T's engineering dedpartment was, many years ago, notorious for not having anyone with ab engineering degree on its staff. Is this still the case? And no, farming out engineering matters to a consultant does not obviate the need for one or more in-house engineers to judge and execute the consultant's findings in both the proposal and performance of the contract/
It sounds like the bid specifications was poor - wouldn't part of your specification require that the company had made this product before ?
Gee I'll buy my next car from Walmart - even though they have never made one before ?
Hyundai Rotem??? These issues are par for the course for this company. The MBTA should have done it's due diligence before entering into a contract with this company. They would have been better off contacting with Bombardier, a good North American company that manufactures coaches in the United States and Canada!!!
I was about to post something very close to this. Bombardier-Learjet is an amazing manufacturer and a deal with them would also address the US's current NAFTA trade deficit. Unfortunately Bombardier-Learjet had a union labor strike in October but as much as I abhor unions, this would have been a blip on the radar compared to what Hundai has wrought.
Bombardier is based in Quebec, but their rail operations are headquartered in Germany, and more than two-thirds of their 35,000 employees are in Europe. If in this age of globalization it comforts you to believe that makes them a "North American company", then good for you. The reality, however, is different.
Obviously the Koreans at Hyundia hadn't dealt with American union workers before (their car plants aren't union) and didn't realize the impact on production and quality. What do you expect when the union leaders spend most of their time telling the workers how much the company sucks and how they are being cheated?
You get what you pay for, and I am sure the T went with the lowest bid. Also, about 99% of passenger railcar companies are now foreign. We once built the BEST; hundreds of Pullman cars. Now all we do is build "kits" imported from countries not known for quality engineering. Many passenger cars today are simply assembled here to conform to something rare in the US today, a law stating such rail equipment be at LEAST assembled in the USA. But all this does is supply a temporary workforce with equipment that isn't always the best. Add in the fact that the T is being operated by a company heavily involved with retired MBTA brass, and you get even more shoddiness.
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MAY halt the order? This should be a no-brainer. As for penalties for doing so, the T should have insisted on quality/performance standards that are or should be, present in every contract.