ST. CROIX — A global project and construction management firm recently filed a lawsuit to block the Virgin Islands Public Finance Authority/Office of Disaster Recovery from executing a contract it claims was “improperly awarded” to another company following a request for proposals.
Hill International Inc., in a civil complaint filed Tuesday in Superior Court, Division of St. Thomas/St. John, seeks a temporary restraining order as well as a preliminary and permanent injunction enjoining the PFA/ODR from entering (or permitting performance under) any contract to provide project management and construction management services with any entity other than Hill.
The global firm claims the PFA board’s decision on August 13 to approve a three-year contract in the amount of $137 million with CH2M Hill Inc. to provide project management and construction management services for ODR’s USVI Rebuild Super Project Management Office, and to deny the award to Hill International is “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion, and contrary to both federal and Virgin Islands procurement law.” Hill is seeking immediate injunctive relief in the form of a temporary restraining order initially and then a preliminary injunction because the firm claims the award of the bid to CH2M rather than to Hill violated federal and Virgin Islands procurement law.
“It’s basically a complaint that is calling into question the bidding process under the VIPFA for the construction and project management aspects of the rebuild VI program,” attorney Alex Moskowitz, of Dudley Newman Feuerzeig LLP, who represents Hill, said.
The request for proposals provided that the RFP would result in an award of at least two contracts by asserting that “a minimum of two (2) contractors ... will be utilized for project management services or delivery and construction management services,” according to the complaint. Hill noted it timely responded to the RFP with a 398-page proposal to perform both project management and delivery and construction management services for a total sum of about $30.2 million.
Hill, and not CH2M, should have been awarded the contract to provide project management and construction management services because the CH2M bid was $107 million greater than the Hill bid, a disparity so great as to establish on its face that the award to CH2M was “arbitrary and capricious,” according to the complaint. Hill claims the PFA/ODR “improperly awarded” the contract to CH2M, which will result in the wrongful disbursement of territorial funds.
“We want to make sure that the bidding process and the reconstruction and all the money that is going to flow through these programs is well spent, and that that inures to the benefit of all Virgin Islanders, and transparency is a goal that we should all achieve in every aspect of business and government,” Moskowitz said.
Moskowitz said Hill was the second highest-rated bidder, adding that the firm reached top scores for being the best value. If Hill’s bid was so highly rated and it was $107 million less than the winning bidder, the attorney questioned how Hill did not become the winning bidder as the “most cost-effective and value-driven bidder.”
“At the end of the day, $107 million to us Virgin Islanders is a lot of money, and that can go towards fixing a lot of our problems,” Moskowitz said, adding that the question is whether the PFA is spending the money in a way that benefits the Virgin Islands to the greatest extent feasible.
Hill claims it should have been awarded the contract because the Evaluation Committee’s decision to award one contract for the scope of work defined by the RFP contravened the provision of the RFP requiring the award of at least two contracts for that scope of work, which also renders the award “arbitrary and capricious.” Hill claims the decision to award a single contract to CH2M was tainted by a conflict of interest since three of the five Evaluation Committee members — Public Works Commissioner Derek Gabriel, Jomo McClean and Tawana Nicholas — are employees of the Virgin Islands Department of Public Works, and CH2M’s parent is Jacobs Solutions Inc., which has two employees who work for DPW.
Hill seeks a temporary restraining order to prevent the PFA/ODR from executing any contract with CH2M until the court decides the motion for preliminary injunctive relief. Hill seeks a preliminary injunction restraining and/or enjoining the PFA/ODR from performance of the contract “improperly awarded” to CH2M until the court decides whether permanent injunctive relief is warranted and determines the merits of the plaintiff’s complaint. Hill seeks a declaratory judgment that the PFA/ODR’s award of the contract to CH2M and the failure to award the contract to Hill was unlawful.
“There’s really two remedies that the client is seeking,” Moskowitz said. “One is to either have a rebid of the RFP so that everybody is bidding on the same scope of work with the same parameters, with transparency, or have the bid awarded to them.”
A message left for ODR Director Adrienne Williams-Octalien seeking comment was not returned as of the time of publication of this article.
