Having already wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on an aborted construction project, District of Columbia contracting officers have agreed to pay two design firms at more than twice the federal standard to salvage four neighborhood libraries, documents obtained by The Examiner show.
The Freelon Group Inc. and Davis, Brody, Bond LLP each will receive more than $3.1 million to design the public libraries if the contracts are approved by the D.C. Council. The council has been given the contracts for ratification, D.C. contracting official Karen Hester said in a phone interview.
The firms would be responsible for designing new libraries in the Tenleytown, Shaw, Anacostia and Benning neighborhoods.
The proposed design fees for Freelon and Davis, Brody are between 12 percent and 15 percent of the projected costs of building the facilities.
“Though this price does exceed the industry standard,” contracting officials wrote in memos obtained by The Examiner, “the price is fair and reasonable given some of the complexities of this project.”
Federal law forbids federal agencies from spending more than 6 percent of projected costs on design fees. But the District is exempt from that law, Hester said.
“There is no fee competition,” Hester said. “This is about getting the best-qualified firm.”
But the design fees are steep, even by D.C. government contract standards. The design costs on the District’s proposed DNA and bioterrorism lab, by comparison, are only 5.3 percent.
“I really don’t want to comment on that,” Hester said.
The public lost more than $700,000 after D.C. officials pulled the plug on the libraries’ design contract midway through the project in late 2005. The new libraries are now not scheduled to open until early 2010.
The internal conflicts over the canceled design contract led library officials to lobby for their own procurement system. But the council approved the legislation for an in-house procurement system only last week, leaving Hester’s office to negotiate the current deal.
Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office blasted the District’s procurement system, saying that it had barely any control over nearly $2 billion a year in transactions.
Anyone with information on the city libraries or the city procurement office can call Bill Myers at 202-459-4956 or e-mail [email protected].
