An Arizona construction company competing for border fence projects has sued the Department of Defense over the Army Corps of Engineers’ “highly flawed solicitation and award” process, the Washington Examiner has learned.
Tommy Fisher, president of Arizona-based Fisher Industries, told the Examiner the Army Corps has blocked pre-qualified companies, including itself, from bidding on jobs over the past two years.
The company filed two complaints with the Defense Department regarding a pair of contracts the Army Corps awarded two companies, SLSCO Ltd. and Barnard Construction Co., in mid-April. In a formal suing document submitted April 25, Fisher accused the Army Corps of not holding standard requests for proposals as an attempt to companies from making bids that would have been lower-priced, and completed more quickly, than the ones it hired.
The Army Corps did not respond to a request for comment on the litigation.
President Trump promised as a Republican candidate to build a wall on the 1,954-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border. Around one-third of it has some type of barrier — the result of the Secure Fence Act of 2005. To date, the Trump administration has installed 40 miles of fence.
Fisher said he sued to bring attention to how he says the government is handling the wall-building bidding process.
“I’m an American, then a builder,” he said. “If you can’t handle it, why not let someone else do it? We’ll give you the bond. We’ll give you the five-year warranty.”
Fisher is a prominent player in the southern border wall building business, having won one of the contracts to build a wall prototype in 2017.
Fisher’s company on two occasions this spring demonstrated for Department of Homeland Security officials, lawmakers, and the Army Corps how it could install 180 feet of wall in two hours. The company says it can build one mile of fence per day within one month of starting construction, and chose to hold demonstrations because it was being blocked from applying for government contracts on the southern border.
Trump recently named Fisher in a Fox News interview as someone he could see hiring after it made an unsolicited proposal to build 218 miles of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border for $3.3 billion, and have the job done within 13 months. The project comes in $2 billion less than the $5.7 billion Trump requested for 234 miles in December.
“Yes, we are dealing with them actually. It’s Fisher — comes from North Dakota, recommended strongly by a great new senator, as you know, Kevin Cramer. And they are real. But they have been bidding and so far they haven’t been meeting the bids. I thought they would,” Trump told host Sean Hannity on April 25.
A spokesperson for Fisher Industries said in a written statement, “Fisher was told the schedule was too aggressive and was a weakness on bid … Fisher was told to raise prices during negotiations.” The company said it could not provide details of the bid amounts because the information was not public.
“He’s still being told mistruths by the Corps. The truth is we weren’t allowed to bid on several of the jobs and the one that we were they said to raise our price,” said Fisher.
“They understand procedure … they don’t understand construction,” he continued. “There’s either a huge disconnect with the Army Corps or it doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing … Or if you’re bending the facts and not being factual, it’s really hurting our national security.”
Three GOP senators say they are concerned with the lack of speed and wasted taxpayer money going toward procurement costs and the Corps subcontracting projects.
“I think the American people are a little frustrated at the expense and kind of like, ‘When is something going to happen when it comes to securing the southern border,'” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., told the Examiner.
Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., knocked the Corps in a Tuesday op-ed for sitting on “millions” of unspent dollars from 2017 and 2018 appropriations.
“[T]he portions of the wall that are under construction are being built at the exceptionally slow rate of a few hundred feet of wall per day. If this continues, DHS and the Army Corps will barely be able to use the money designated for the wall in the FY19 appropriations package before the end of the President’s first term, let alone the funds mobilized through the President’s emergency declaration,” Cramer wrote.
