San Francisco International Airpork

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.

And then there is the mother of all change orders: the change order to write change orders. Tutor-Saliba billed $428,000 to pay for staff to write and process the blizzard of change orders Tutor-Saliba eventually submitted. Tutor says that he "does not get rich off of change orders," which, he contends, include only a 5 percent profit margin for his firm. But he declined to reveal the amount his company will profit from its SFO contracts.

One of the bigger wellsprings of SFO change orders is requests from the airlines that use the airport's terminals, led by United Airlines, which has one of its hubs at SFO. The airlines have a contract with the airport that limits the amount of construction costs that can be passed through to them. Through its position on the airport advisory committee, the Airline Liaison Office, which represents the airlines' interests, has considerable influence over the master plan. During the international terminal project, this combination of contractual limits and administrative influence has led to a situation in which millions of dollars of design and construction work was apparently done more than once.

Long after the construction contracts for the international terminal complex were let, the airlines, led by United, decided they wanted several exclusive lounges for use by first-class passengers. The Airport Commission approved these dramatic, costly changes, which include a $2.2 million lounge added to one boarding wing of the terminal. A similar lounge is in the works for the terminal's other boarding wing. All in all, there will be 14 lounges and clubhouses scattered about the new terminal.

Neither United Airlines nor SFO's Airline Liaison Office returned telephone calls seeking comment for this article. But, according to change order documents, inserting United Airlines' lounge required structural changes to the building's steel frames, including the addition of elevators and escalators, the removal of walls, and the relocation of electrical conduits, water and sewage pipes, ventilation ducts, and fire control systems. It took years to bend the buildings around the airlines' new clubhouses. Overall, the airport attributes $91 million in change orders to direct requests from the airlines and concessionaires.

There are other seemingly less than vital odd items larded into master plan change orders approved by the Airport Commission. When travelers are not eating fast food, or buying liquor in duty-free shops, SFO provides a scattering of mini-art museums for viewing pleasure. Over the years, these temporary exhibits have ranged in content from ancient boating artifacts to a retrospective of post-World War II children's lunch pail art. Now, however, the new international terminal will be home to a permanent, $4 million Aviation Archive, Library, and Museum, housed in a 6,000-square-foot replica of SFO's first terminal, built in 1937.

The archive will include rare books, purchased for $200,000 from a collector in New York City, that focus on airplanes. These books are not part of the spending on art that must, by law, be included in San Francisco's public works projects; they were added to the master plan in March 1999, even as the budget was closing in on being $1 billion overdrawn.

Every SFO change order was approved first by the construction managers overseeing the master plan, then by the advisory board, and finally by the Airport Commission. Any of the changes could have been stopped at any stage of the approval process. Instead of denying the airlines what they wanted, or holding architects and contractors responsible for what appear to be mistakes or substandard work, the commission generally decided to go deeper into debt to fund the cascades of change orders. And the change orders led to delays.