The Broward School District bungled its latest effort to find outside managers to take over its troubled construction program, an audit has found, raising questions about how the district will ensure more than 100 school projects don\u2019t face further delays.<\/p>\n
Superintendent Howard Hepburn plans to ask the School Board to vote Tuesday to reject all bids<\/a> received from companies vying to oversee the district\u2019s construction projects, following the report drafted by Chief Auditor John Rhodes, district spokesman John Sullivan told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Chief Auditor\u2019s report identified concerns with how the procurement process was conducted, including deviations from established procedures,\u201d Sullivan said.\u00a0\u201cThe Superintendent is continuing to review the report to determine appropriate next steps. That review will guide any corrective actions to strengthen oversight and ensure future procurements fully comply with District policy and state law. Personnel matters will be addressed appropriately once the review is complete.\u201d<\/p>\n School Board members are now considering taking emergency actions for the construction program,\u00a0which has been plagued by years of delays and cost overruns.<\/p>\n The audit report, released Tuesday, found that district staff selected vendors without ensuring they were qualified and engaged in a rushed process that led to missteps.<\/p>\n These actions may have unfairly affected\u00a0potential vendors and limited the pool of applicants, the audit found.<\/p>\n \u201cPlanning deficiencies led to a heightened sense of urgency that may have contributed to procedural irregularities and solicitation language that may have been unclear to staff and confusing or discouraging to potential vendors,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n The district was seeking vendors to help it complete about 100 long-delayed projects that are part of the district\u2019s 2014 SMART bond referendum, as well as some newer projects, such as a replacement building for Rickards Middle, the site of a 2021 roof collapse.<\/p>\n The poor management of the SMART bond referendum was the major focus of a statewide grand jury report<\/a> completed in 2021 and released in 2022. That report prompted Gov. Ron DeSantis to remove and replace four School Board members<\/a>. One of the deficiencies cited by the grand jury was a nine-month delay in getting the district\u2019s first program manager to oversee the bond due to irregularities in the bidding and selection process.<\/p>\n District officials have said they need the help of outside companies because they don\u2019t have enough staff with the needed expertise in their facilities department. The district has used two program managers to oversee construction in the past decade: CBRE Heery\u00a0from 2015 to 2020 and AECOM from 2020 to present.<\/p>\n The district\u2019s contract with AECOM expires Jan. 17, 2026, after 5\u00bd\u00a0years. District lawyers told School Board members multiple times this year that extensions beyond that time period are not allowed in most situations, and any replacement vendor must be competitively bid.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we were to change that now, that would be contrary to the competitive procurement where we set forth the material terms\u201d on the 2020 solicitation, Assistant General Counsel Tom Cooney told the School Board on May 6. \u201cWe had three bidders at the time. Had they known they had an opportunity to go longer, they might have been presented differently. They might have been ranked differently. So it could get us into some hot water.\u201d<\/p>\n But Cooney also said on May 6 that state law allows for some flexibility in times of an emergency, \u201cwhich we\u2019re not there. That isn\u2019t to say in several months we might not be in the situation\u201d where an emergency arises.<\/p>\n That time has come, Board member Allen Zeman told the Sun Sentinel, since it\u2019s unlikely the district could complete a competitive bidding process before AECOM\u2019s contract expires next month. So Zeman is proposing an emergency one-year extension of AECOM\u2019s contract.<\/p>\n \u201cDeclare that you can\u2019t live without it,\u201d Zeman said. \u201cWe have to look really hard at our ability to build anything. To me, that\u00a0means you\u2019re probably going to do a 12-month bridge based on an emergency, and you\u2019re going to use that bridge to get to substantial completion on as many projects as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Several school board members requested the audit after receiving complaints about the vendor selection process.<\/p>\n \u201cI will work with the chief auditor and send every document that we have to whatever investigator because I know the team hasn\u2019t done anything nefarious,\u201d Hepburn said at a Nov. 12 School Board meeting. \u201cWe always take a thorough look whenever any board member brings concerns to us.\u201d<\/p>\n School Board members had voiced concern in April that they could face troubles once AECOM\u2019s contract expires Jan. 17, especially if a vendor bidding on the new contract filed a formal bid protest, alleging the process was unfair. The district would not be able to award a new contract until the protest was either dropped or ruled upon by a judge, under state procurement rules.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we\u2019re in a situation where the AECOM contract is expiring in January, we don\u2019t have a contract to approve and we can\u2019t extend it beyond January, where does that leave the board?\u201d Board member Sarah Leonardi asked Chief Operating Officer Wanda Paul at an April 22 meeting.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that we have sufficient time even if there is a protest,\u201d Paul responded. \u201cOur intent is to learn from what\u2019s not happened correctly in the past and to improve the program.\u201d<\/p>\n Jennifer Andreu, executive director of procurement, told the School Board at the same meeting that her office planned to advertise the solicitation in June and bring it to the School Board for award in August. She said her office was trying to write the language of the request for qualifications \u201cvery tight\u201d to avoid a possible bid protest.<\/p>\n Leonardi was not persuaded.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a lot of time we need to be planning and expecting the worst, and it doesn\u2019t feel like we\u2019re doing this right now,\u201d she said at the April 22 meeting. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be sitting at this table in January of 2026 with no options because our hands are tied, and this has happened over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n School Board members asked district staff members to bring the solicitation to the board for review and approval before it went out, but that didn\u2019t happen, the audit states. It went out to bid on Aug. 6.<\/p>\n Unlike in 2020, when the district sought just one program manager to oversee all the work in the district\u2019s bond program, this time, district officials decided they needed multiple firms that could manage different projects, facilities employees told auditors.<\/p>\n Some parts of the district\u2019s solicitation said the district was looking for \u201cno less than two\u201d vendors, while other parts said they were looking for only two. The district selected three.<\/p>\n \u201cThe inconsistency in the solicitation language regarding the number of intended awardees may have negatively impacted vendor participation, particularly among smaller or less established firms,\u201d the report said. \u201cIf three vendors were being sought, it may have encouraged more vendor participation.\u201d<\/p>\n Three program manager vendors submitted bids: AECOM, Jacobs and EXP. But when bids were opened on Sept. 9, none met the financial requirements set by the district, which required a certain ratio of assets to liabilities, the audit said.<\/p>\n Cooney told the auditors he at first did not see how the district could proceed. But after speaking with Paul, Cooney agreed to engage with an external law firm, which determined the ratio\u00a0was not a serious enough issue to require bids to be rejected.<\/p>\n The auditor\u2019s office learned that the district listed the same financial requirements in the 2020 solicitation, received three bids from companies that also didn\u2019t meet it and made the same decision then to waive the requirements as a technicality.<\/p>\n Auditors \u201cfound it concerning\u201d that neither the procurement nor facilities department \u201creassessed the appropriateness of this requirement, particularly given that the previous solicitation also resulted in a waiver and only generated three proposals at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n The district uses a group called the Qualification Selection Evaluation Committee, or QSEC, to evaluate, score and rank proposals from vendors. When the group met on Oct. 15, Cooney recommended the committee pass motions not only to waive the financial requirements but also waive the scoring and ranking of proposers and direct staff to negotiate with all three vendors.<\/p>\n Auditors \u201cfound it troubling that the QSEC chose to direct staff to negotiate agreements with all three proposing firms without evaluating the submitting firms based on their qualifications, project approaches, and ability to deliver the required services,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n One of the motions referred to the \u201cSchool Board Administration\u2019s desire to enter into agreements with all three proposers,\u201d the audit said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe QSEC members \u2026 interviewed were not clear who exactly \u2018desired\u2019 all three proposers to be recommended but they had not witnessed anything being waived before as a member of QSEC,\u201d the report said. \u201cThey recognized there was a sense of urgency for QSEC to proceed because the Assistant General Counsel was at the meeting to present the motions.\u201d<\/p>\n Cooney told auditors that Paul was the administrator who wanted to proceed with the three vendors, the audit said. Hepburn told auditors that \u201che was not involved in that decision.\u201d<\/p>\n Sullivan said the district is now making plans on how to proceed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe District is evaluating interim operational options to ensure construction projects continue without disruption,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cThis action reflects the Superintendent\u2019s commitment to transparency, accountability and the integrity of District\u2019s procurement processes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Broward School District bungled its latest effort to find outside managers to take over its troubled construction…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[113,249,251,250,114,115,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-82995","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-lauderdale","8":"tag-education","9":"tag-fort-lauderdale","10":"tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","11":"tag-fort-lauderdale-news","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}