Image Courtesy of IDM LLC Stadium or Mirage? Plans for a $1.5-billion stadium in Las Vegas are on shaky financial ground. Developer Chris Milam's planned 750,000-sq-ft, 16,500-seat sports arena in Henderson, 12 miles south of Las Vegas, may be headed for bust. Due to fraud concerns, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has delayed the potential sale of 480 acres to Milam's Silver State Land LLC 40 days until Feb. 6. at the request of Henderson City Attorney Josh Reid.Milam had submitted a $2.1-million deposit in June for the $10.56-million purchase; the balance was due Dec. 3. Reid wrote in
Louis Berger Group completed a costly, condensed two-year program during which it upgraded its compliance and audit systems and functioned with the supervision of a monitor as part of its 2010 settlement with federal prosecutors of fraud and overbilling charges.Known as a deferred prosecution agreement, the program’s completion marked the end of a painful period for the company that included an initial $69-million settlement of fraudulent billing charges with the U.S. attorney in Newark, N.J.Based in Morristown, N.J., Louis Berger Group said in a statement Dec. 20 that it spent an additional $20 million since the initial settlement on new
Related Links: N.Y. Concrete Test Firm Testwell Found Guilty of Racketeering 2011 indictment of American Standard Testing & Consulting Labs, owner and employees (PDF) In another action linked to an ongoing probe of fraudulent concrete testing in New York City, American Standard Testing and Consulting Laboratories Inc., its owner and several employees have pleaded guilty to falsifying testing and inspection reports on some of the city's largest public and private projects, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said on Dec. 14.The guilty pleas follows the August 2011 indictment of the firm, owner Alan Fortich and five engineers for submitting
ftbelknap.org A greenhouse in part of the Fort Belknap reservation's college, where Dennis Lyon was the source of a surety bond. Related Links: ENR Editorial: Why Bond Assets Need Scrutiny GovTrack Page on H.R. 3534 Montana Commissioner of Securities and Insurance press release The Montana Commissioner of Securities and Insurance has added $155,000 to the tally of fines racked up by an individual surety provider accused of violating insurance statutes in eight states.Montana had previously fined Dennis Lyon $645,561 for supplying bid bonds and a performance bond without a license and with unverifiable backing assets, in 2004 and 2010. The
Related Links: Engineers Push Envelope to Make Shale Gas Extraction Safer Seeking Alpha website Chimera Energy Corp., a Houston-based company that says it has developed a new, non-hydraulic shale oil-and-gas extraction technology, has offered little substance to bolster its claims. Establishing definitive proof of the company's technological claims or the business relationships touted in its press releases is about as easy as finding an actual example of the company's namesake, a Greek mythological creature with a lion's head, a goat's torso and a snake's tail.ENR recently mentioned Chimera as one of a number of energy-services firms that eliminate or greatly
Photo Courtesy of PCL Construction Enterprises Inc. PCL, an early adopter of ethics compliance programs, built the USAF training facility in Colorado Springs. Photo Courtesy of PCL Construction Enterprises Inc. Granite Construction is building a $126-million spillway at Folsom Dam in Northern California for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Related Links: Univ. of Ill. Voids Design Contract After Ethics Review Terminated, Then Penalized? What Federal Agencies Can and Can't Do Widespread use of internal compliance and ethics programs by contractors is in its infancy, but many industry insiders believe that, like safety programs, they're here to stay. These programs
Image courtesy of Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The university projected that renovation of the 120-year-old Natural History Building would cost around $70 million and involve replacing substantial portions of the floor. Related Links: Chicago Tribune coverage of the Board of Trustees decision BLDD Architecture's project page for the Natural History Building renovation A top Illinois university is about to put a price on failing to bring a potential conflict of interest between a school official and her architect husband to the attention of state officials for 15 months.The exact start dates for renovation of the
Related Links: World Bank list of ineligible firms and individuals The World Bank has taken a step toward greater transparency in its anticorruption activities, publishing the full text of decisions issued by its Sanctions Board to debar companies that allegedly engaged in fraud or other illegal practices on projects the bank finances.The number of firms or individuals debarred from bank-funded projects also has risen compared with the numbers several years ago.The initial group of published rulings, announced on May 30, includes debarments of eight companies in a range of industries. No U.S.-based construction firms are among the eight firms cited.One
Related Links: Press release from U.S. Attorney for District of Columbia ENR 10/6/11: Two Corps Officials, Two Others Charged With Contracting Fraud In the latest development in a federal probe of alleged contracting fraud, a former Army Corps of Engineers manager and his son have pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy charges connected to Corps contracts.Kerry F. Khan, 54, a former program manager in the Corps Directorate of Contingency Operations, entered a guilty plea on May 17 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to charges of bribery and conspiracy to commit money laundering.Ronald C. Machen, Jr., U.S.
Richard Korman for ENR Styles says that Congress has been pressing for rules that would trigger automatic debarment of contractors under suspicion of fraud. Related Links: U.S. Air Force's Steve Shaw on Ethics Is it possible for a federal agency to debar or suspend a contractor that has defaulted on one contract or been terminated for convenience? That was one of the questions put to Angela B. Styles, head of the government contracts group at the legal practice of Crowell & Moring, at a meeting May 2 of the Construction Industry Ethics and Compliance Initiative in Washington, D.C. The answer was provocative,