San Francisco International Airpork

The biggest construction contracts for the master plan -- including those for the international terminal building, a boarding area, parking garages, the light rail tracks and stations, and the airport's BART station -- are held by a joint venture called the Tutor-Saliba Corp., Perini Corp., and Buckley & Company Inc. (Richard Blum, husband of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, is a major stockholder in the Perini Corp. Blum and the Perini Corp. also are partners with the Tutor-Saliba Corp. on the construction of the Los Angeles subway, which is also over budget and late.) Overall, Tutor-Saliba holds some $880 million in SFO construction contracts.

And overall, Tutor-Saliba has gained approval of $250 million in change orders for its airport contracts.

Controversy over change orders is nothing new for the Tutor-Saliba Corp. During construction of the chronically delayed Los Angeles subway system, the company racked up more than $130 million in change orders. The late mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, publicly labeled Ron Tutor, the owner of the Tutor-Saliba Corp., a "change order artist," suggesting he submitted an artificially low bid to get the job and then made up the difference with change orders.

The Tutor-Saliba/Perini/Buckley venture started to build the SFO international terminal in October 1996. The original $248 million contract for the building shell now is forecast to have grown by $240 million, or nearly 100 percent, by completion. Some of this growth was anticipated, but about $175 million of these change orders relates to costs incurred for delays, redesigns, "shortcomings in construction documents," and changes requested by the airlines that will use the new terminal.

An $8 million contract modification submitted in January 1998 by Tutor-Saliba includes the following unusual or unexplained change orders:

" In mid-1999, Tutor-Saliba charged nearly $5 million for fixing two concrete floors that were not poured level. In a change order, SFO Associates said the mistake may have happened because measurements were "inexact." They also expressed concern about the design of the structural steel beams below the slabs. The airport says that it is investigating who is at fault for the floor problem.

" Tutor-Saliba charged $647,000 to fill a series of roof-support column frames with concrete. According to an airport spokesperson, "Either the architects or engineers forgot to indicate that the [wood] column frames needed to be filled with concrete." Apparently, the original plans called for constructing empty frames. It is odd that such a large oversight could make it past teams of architects, engineers, construction managers, and the contractors who methodically scrutinize plans to calculate their bids. In an interview last week, Ron Tutor said that it is not the contractor's responsibility to identify errors in the bid specifications. No one has been penalized for the oversight.

" Tens of thousands of dollars were spent to rebuild steel and concrete openings for escalators. The slots for the escalators were built before the airport decided what size moving stairs would be bought. A similar situation occurred when the airport spent $1 million to retrofit steel beams that support the terminal floor: The beams were set in place before the size of pipes fitting under the floor were known.

And that's just a few of the more than 400 change orders Tutor-Saliba has submitted for its airport work. Tracking those change orders, however, is no easy task. In response to an SF Weekly public records request, an airport lawyer said that many change orders could not be found -- even though the airport has paid construction managers several million dollars for "document control" related to the master plan.

The change orders the airport did make public, however, raise numerous questions about oversight of costs at the airport. In August 1997, Tutor-Saliba charged the airport $240,000 for a furnished triple-wide office trailer for use by SFO Associates, the construction management firm that oversees Tutor-Saliba's work. A representative of GE Capital Modular Space, which manufactures construction office trailers in the Bay Area, says his firm charges $97,200 for a similar brand-new trailer, and rents such models for $1,731 a month.

As part of its contract to build the terminal, Tutor-Saliba also billed the airport $330,000 to build indoor office space for the construction management consultants. It even billed the airport $1,000 a month for cleaning these offices.

In October 1998, a joint venture known as Myers/Condon Johnson, which is building new freeway ramps to serve the airport, received a change order listing more than $2 million for "additional unidentified work." When asked about this change order, airport staffers said that use of the word "'unidentified' may be misleading. It is used in the context of scope that could not be fully defined during design and is therefore 'unidentified' on the contract documents." In other words, the airport acknowledged, it signed a contract that included provisions requiring the airport to pay for undefined amounts and types of work.

Perhaps the most troubling change orders are those relating to many millions of dollars spent to revise the positions of structural, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems that were already in place at the new terminal. As structural steel beams were cut and rewelded to fix mistakes, or to expand concession space, or to accommodate special changes requested by the airlines, the placement of environmental support sys-tems behind ceilings and walls was shifted, adding tremendous cost to the project. In effect, significant portions of the terminal were built twice.