(The following story by Jere Downs and Nathan Gorenstein appeared on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on February 27. T.J. Dorricott Jr. is Local Chairman of BLET Division 71 in Philadelphia.)
PHILADELPHIA — SEPTA general manager Faye Moore yesterday defended the agency’s pick of the lowest-cost and lowest-rated firm for a $236 million contract to build Regional Rail cars.
“This was a long and hard procurement process. I will tell anybody it was done well,” Moore said after a Regional Rail employee, speaking at the agency’s monthly board meeting, questioned a preliminary decision to give the award for 104 cars to a South Korean consortium, United Transit Systems.
SEPTA has maintained that while United Transit has little experience building cars to U.S. standards, it is otherwise a successful worldwide producer.
The top-ranked technical firm, Kawasaki Rail Cars Inc., has filed suit and on Tuesday persuaded a judge to halt a final contract award to United Transit pending a March 15 hearing.
Kawasaki contends that SEPTA improperly revised specifications midway through the two-year-long procurement process to favor United Transit.
Yesterday, Thomas Dorricott, a spokesman for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said, “Our concerns are the fact that the process and philosophies of this project have been flawed.”
Dorricott, who represents the men and women who drive Regional Rail trains, questioned SEPTA’s decision to save $14 million with United Transit, which received the agency’s lowest technical ranking: 125 out of 175. Runner-up Kawasaki had a rating of 162, and bid $250 million for the work.
SEPTA’s decision to recommend United Transit “made it sound like, ‘We’re willing to undergo a certain amount of risk just to save $14 million,’ ” Dorricott said. “Is that amount of savings appropriate?
“I don’t believe… that any board would approve of a project that he or she did not think would work,” he said.
Meanwhile, SEPTA began the process of trying to move the case to a court that specializes in commercial litigation.
It wants Commerce Court to hear the case rather than Court of Common Pleas Judge Matthew Carrafiello, who issued the injunction.
“Carrafiello is a regular, day to day, Common Pleas Court judge,” SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney said. “The effort is to have a very complicated, business contractual matter seen by a judge who does these things.”
No hearing was scheduled on the motion to move the case.
SEPTA, already allied with Dilworth Paxon, hired another law firm, Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young, yesterday.
Stradley Ronon specializes in business law, and represents manufacturing, pharmaceutical and financial firms. The firm’s chairman, William R. Sasso, is also serving this year as chairman of the board of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.