Coyote Dam Hydro-Electric Plant Retrofit: Rejected Construction Procedure Submittals

As the on-site claims consultant / claims analyst for the client's project manager, I was asked to review the project documents on a problem retrofit hydro powerplant underway in California.

This evolved into a continuous one-year fact finding and report writing engagement which exposed and ultimately clarified defective owner design, owner overinspection, unreasonable work rejection, and actual and practical performance impossibility.

Unknown to the contractor-client, who was desperately trying to initiate progress on its fixed-price, fixed-duration project, with the project duration "clock" now racing ahead, my analysis was essential in conclusively exposing exactly how the powerplant's designer had never received Corps of Engineers approval of its design for retrofitting the hydroplant to the Corps' dam!

Meanwhile, the engineer-designer, in charge administratively at the site for the powerplant owner, was attempting to assuage the Corps' design concerns by circulating (and re-circulating) the contractor's construction installation submittals through the Corps’ approval channels, a thing not required in the client’s construction contract.

This exercise manifested itself in a long series of contractor installation submittal "rejections" by the designer, orders to the contractor to "revise and resubmit" and the like. Not unexpectedly, but unknown to my client, the submittals didn't suit the Corps as substitutes for owner design! Once the real technical and other factual reasons were clearly exposed in my claims reports they could be dealt with by the contractor's attorneys.