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JASPER, Tenn. Marion County government has sued a Chattanooga construction company over a new heath department building under construction. Records show a stop work order was issued by county officials in April, shortly after McBrayer Construction began work on the 660-thousand-dollar building in Jasper. Building inspectors claimed McBrayer didn't properly install structural supports in the concrete pad of the building and failed to install wire mesh in the pad as the architect's plans required. The company sued in July, claiming Marion County breached its contract and owed the company 180-thousand dollars for work already done. The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports a lawyer for McBrayer didn't return phone calls seeking comment on Friday. Copyright 2006 Associated Press.
WASHINGTON -- The contractor that botched construction of a $75 million police academy in Baghdad so badly that human waste dripped from the ceilings has produced shoddy work on 13 out of 14 projects reviewed by federal auditors, the top official monitoring Iraq's reconstruction told Congress yesterday. In a House hearing on what has gone wrong with reconstruction contracts in Iraq, Parsons Corp. quickly became the focus, taking bipartisan heat for its record of falling short on critical projects. The Pasadena, Calif., firm was supposed to build facilities at the heart of the $21 billion US-led reconstruction program, including fire stations, border forts, and healthcare centers. But inspectors have found a litany of flaws in the firm's work. The one project reviewed by auditors that was being constructed correctly, a prison, was taken away from Parsons before its completion because of escalating costs.
In the two years since All American Driveways and Pool Deck Inc. has been in business, the Hollywood company and its owner, John T. Pluto, have been the subject of dozens of complaints and several lawsuits.
Consumers have complained that the company took payments for jobs that were not completed, did substandard work and, in a few cases, signed contracts for jobs they are not licensed to do, such as screen enclosures and patio construction.
Broward County officials are investigating All American and Pluto, a longtime South Florida entrepreneur. Pluto is on probation until 2008, after pleading guilty to defrauding Miami-Dade County consumers while working with a now-defunct company called Affordable Concrete. Under the terms of his probation, he is prohibited from entering into construction contracts, but he can work in the construction field, court records show.
Lack of skilled workers is the biggest risk to the growth prospects of one of Australia's largest construction companies, the John Holland Group, forcing it to start projects later than it otherwise would have. But this is being offset by significant increases in productivity under new regulations governing the building industry and from changes to workplace laws, company executives say. With boom conditions in Western Australia and strong conditions in other parts of the country, the problem is not in finding projects, it is in finding people, says group managing director David Stewart. "We can go and buy as much equipment as we want, we can buy construction materials from all over the world, we don't have any shortage of clients in the current market, but we haven't got enough quality people," Mr Stewart said yesterday.
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