A building executive said a decision was imminent from the D.C. Contract Appeals Board that could clear the way for construction to get under way soon on the city’s $100-million-plus crime laboratory.
Mayor Adrian Fenty awarded a $133 million contract to Whiting-Turner in February to build the lab. But the city still has not broken ground on the project after Tompkins Builders first requested the board to re-evaluate Tompkins’ bid in March.
Since then, Tompkins has repeatedly protested the District’s evaluation process, forcing Fenty to withdraw his award recommendation to Whiting-Turner after submitting it to the D.C. Council for approval.
Tompkins claims it can construct the lab quicker than Whiting-Turner, and for less money.
On Tuesday, Tompkins Senior Vice President George Kreis told The Examiner he was expecting a decision from the board “at any moment.”
D.C. Councilman Phil Mendelson, D-at large, said he was hopeful the board would announce a decision soon so the District could move forward on the construction of a lab he said was essential to the city’s crime-solving capabilities.
“A project this important, of this size, that the government should have been more proactive and more careful so that this contract would have been issued by now,” Mendelson said.
In an amended protest filed to the CAB in July, Tompkins described the District’s reasoning for awarding the contract to a higher-priced bidder as “irrational and unreasonable,” and that the District “failed to articulate any legitimate benefit it would receive by awarding to the significantly higher-priced offer.”
The proposed laboratory building would house the District’s Metropolitan Police Department Forensics Laboratory, the Department of Public Health and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, with the hope that a consolidated effort would improve coordination and efficiency of investigations.
