The general contractor joint venture that built the $2.2 billion Salesforce Transit Center in San Francisco is now suing the structure’s owner—the Transbay Joint Powers Authority—for $150 million, alleging breach of contract.

What Happened

In the complaint, Webcor/Obayashi charges that over the course of the project, the authority was unable to make “critical decisions required to keep the project on time and budget” and claims that faulty design documents and unresponsiveness led to delays.

Fullmetal2887, CC-BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The general contractor joint venture that built the $2.2 billion Salesforce Transit Center in San Francisco is now suing the structure’s owner—the Transbay Joint Powers Authority—for $150 million, alleging breach of contract.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the contractor had to issue more than 12,000 requests for information and 1,603 change order requests to fix errors and omissions in project design.

The 21-page complaint also claims that the Transbay Joint Powers Authority did not increase the joint venture's contract after the accelerated work pace at the authority's request, did not issue the appropriate change orders, misused contingency funds and is liable for pass-through claims from subcontractors.

The authority responded with a statement, which reads: "The Transbay Joint Powers Authority will hold Webcor/Obayashi Joint Venture responsible for their contractual commitment to deliver this project to the people of the Bay Area and the state of California.  While we are still reviewing the details of the complaint, at first glance, many of the accusations that deal with delays to the project pre-date Webcor’s repeated commitments to deliver the transit center on time. The TJPA remains focused on reopening the transit center as soon as safely possible to the public and we hope that all parties will join us in that effort.”

Though the TJPA response references the recent closing of the structure, the original lawsuit makes no mention of the recent controversy surrounding multiple cracked beams, which were found about six weeks after the center opened in August. Fixes for those beams are still pending review from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

In Other News

About a week after the lawsuit was filed, though, the TJPA was dealt another blow by the San Francisco Transportation Authority board, which voted to withhold additional money for the center and also denied a $9.7 million funding request to start further work on the trail service.

At the time of the vote, board members questioned the authority’s management and financial capabilities and plan to conduct a thorough review of management for projects going forward.