Transparency on Public Construction Projects – Part 2

In my last post, I explained that we need to improve transparency on public construction projects. Yet most agencies don’t do a good job of it. Here is why:

• They are afraid of exposing mistakes or poor decisions
• They don’t want the added burden of constant public scrutiny – they have enough to do
• They don’t have the systems and infrastructure to make the information available
• They are trying to hide something

Other than trying to hide something, these are legitimate issues that an agency has to consider.
One of our clients had these concerns – a school district managing a new capital program. However, the client decided to take a leap of faith and decided to give total access to information about the schools they were building. Our client used our construction project management system long enough to get the data in and get comfortable with it. Then he started attending meetings with his laptop and projector.
He went to Board meetings – members would ask questions regarding contractor selection, decisions regarding the project itself, etc. In front of the board, he would pull up the information along with the backup to support his decisions. The same would happen at community meetings and at board appointed construction advisory committee meetings.
The first few meetings were scary. Not only did he have to explain his decisions, but he also had to educate them on the system they were looking at and how the information got there. He was afraid that once people realized how much information he could access, they would ask even more questions.

A funny thing happened – at first people asked more questions. They tested him. But very quickly, within a few meetings, there were hardly any questions. Today he prepares much less than he used to for these meetings and he gets less questions. Once he gave people insight into his management and decision process – they trusted him more and become less interested in each specific decision. This was a true win-win – for the public as well as our client and his staff. And in the eyes of his project stakeholders, he is a “rock star.” They love him!

On a flip side – I read about a school district being investigated by the local newspaper. They reported on the dollars of construction completed, firms who were awarded contracts and variances on each project from original schedule and budget. In the article, they reported that it took them about 1 year to gather this information. There is an incredible amount of distrust in this community – that was the main theme of the article actually. And I’m sure it’s not fun for the Director of Construction. It’s a lose-lose and it really doesn’t need to be that way there or in any community.