, without first giving an opportunity to you, directors, to focus on the out of reach in san francisco. thank you. >> that includes members who wish to address you. chairman ford: let's move onto public comment. >> members of the public have the opportunity to address you on items not on the calendar. i have not received any notification. chairman ford: ok we are ready to move into the consent calendar. ok. any individual who wishes to address the board under public comment, please give the board secretary the ridden public, it slip. -- written public comment slip.

>> good morning. stan rogers, a local small- business owner in san francisco. my concern with the sbe programs going on, i have looked at several of the programs going on in san francisco, and there are goals set for sbe participation and a lot of the goals are not being met and it is very discouraging for us. we have to meet goals in order to be certified in the sbe program. i feel like the bigger projects that are put out here, there has been an effort to use sbe, but i do not think there has been a bona fide effort to use sbe's in

these programs. i look at the number being considered on these projects. 95% of them are below the standards of the goals that were set forth in this project. i feel a lot of these goals are not attainable for sbe's because of the size of some of these packages. instead of their just being a good faith effort -- there just being a good faith effort as stipulated in the contract, there should be an independent panel or somebody to evaluate these good faith efforts so that small and local business can become a part of these bigger projects, and not a smaller portion of the projects going on in the city. chairman ford: thank you.

are there any other public commenters? it appears we have one more. good morning. >> good morning, chairman, directors. my name is jim stevens. i represent the small business community of san francisco. my company is a construction company. we are certified in san francisco. i tend to mirror the comments of my colleagues. i must commend the people that spoke before with regard to the sbe, dbe's. it sounds nice, however, i would mirror chairman ford's comments

about the difference between perception and reality. the perception is that everything is being done, but the reality is, we are going through something else. i would also like to reinforce with you that we have a better measurement of what is really going on within small business communities, specifically with the construction area. have a wonderful holiday. chairman ford: thank you. you do the same. >> we can move into your consent calendar. all matters are routine and will be acted on by a single vote. we have not received any indication that a member of the public wishes to have any items severed. your items areapproving the minutes of the november 1, 2010 meeting.authorizing the

executive director to execute contract modification no. 2 to agreement no. 08-07-contt-000 with mcguire and hester for additional construction services required as part of the temporary terminal project, increasing the contract by $378,700 for a total contract sum of $20,521,677.18. chairman ford: properly moved. seconded. all those in favor say aye. >> the consent calendar is approved. we can go ahead and move into the regular calendar. item eight. approving an amendment to contract no. 08-04-cmgc-000, authorizing webcor/obayashi joint venture to award a trade subcontract to balfour beatty infrastructure inc. as the responsible bidder submitting the lowest responsive bid in the amount of $187,251,070 for tg03 - buttress, shoring, and excavation, and thereby increasing authorized direct costs under contract no. 08-04-

cmgc-000 by $187,251,070 and increasing the authorized construction services fee by $15,354,587.74. >> directors, we have brian who will present the item. we also have cheryl from legal counsel. chairman ford: thank you. >> good morning, directors. principal director, tjpa. this is the biggest contract we are putting out to date. i would like to run through the importance of what we are doing. it is the buttressed shoring excavation contract. the shoring wall will surround the area, will be 110 feet deep. the bottom of the wall will be

15 feet below the bottom of the excavation. the wall will provide a key below the water bearing sands, thus limiting the need for watering during subsequent excavation. by limiting this, the tjpa would lower the risk of lower water tables around surrounding buildings and avoid any settlement. shoreham will contain 330,000 square feet of cement with steel i beams. the shower wall is the first item of work of the major items in the contract. the contractor will start work drilling in the shoring walls in june 11, and they should take nine months to complete. the next major item is the buttress. that is there to minimize any

potential settlement with the adjacent mission street tower. the tjpa will build a buttressed in the foot of the transit center below excavation. the buttress will consist of 32,000 feet of 70-foot diameter drill shafts filled with concrete. there will be approximately 210 feet deep and will be keyed into the bedrock, thus forming a continuous, solid mass of concrete. tjpa contractors will start drilling in october of 2011, and the buttress should take 12 months to complete. the other major item is the cross bracing that is needed to support.

as the soil is removed, the structure needs to be balanced. it will be stored in four levels. the train trestle will provide a working platform long enough to allow the train box. the temporary support of bridges will provide traffic lanes over the excavation on the deal, freemont, and first streets. across bracing crane trestle and temporary bridges will contain approximately 14,000 tons of steel. total volume of excavation will be 51 50,000 cubic yards. work on the excavation is scheduled to start in november 2011 and will take 23 months to complete.

request for qualifications for this large contract were issued first on february 2. nine packages were received on february 23. these packages were evaluated by tjpa, cmgc, and pmpc staff, and six were found to be qualified. one contractor was excluded when a subsequent conflict of interest arose. the invitation to bids were therefore sent to the five remaining contractors on july 30. during the bid period, seven addendum were drawn to the contractors bidding it. the engineers estimates after completion of the addendum was

$5 million. the bids were opened the during nine. four bids were received. one of the five qualified did not submit a bid. the bids are as follows. it is noticeable, the high bid was 10 percent over the engineers at does 's estimate. this is a confirmation that the bid package was understood by contractors and these are satisfactory levels.

on november 16, we received a bid protest from the second lowest bidder. this was reviewed carefully and on november 29, the tjpa denied the protest. so the recommendation is to award contracts to balfour beatty. they are a large contractor, 19th in the world. they have experienced all over the world, including relevant experience in california. they possess the requisite experience to do this type of work. it is a major project. they submitted 17.3% sbe

participation, the majority of which was worked for trucking companies to get that 51 50,000 yards removed. this amounts to $32.2 million. they submitted the lowest responsive bid. it is important that we move ahead. i recommend approval of this contract. it means to keep us on schedule. this is the real work that we will achieve, getting the train box build, and the train on top of it. chairman ford: any questions from the board? director colon hen. director cohen: and when would

the work began on this? >> they would start in january with load design work for all of that cross-bracing, permits. the first piece of work would start around march, april. that would be the extraction of timber files underneath the buttress. you cannot deal with wooden piles in the way, so that would be our first item of work, but a lot of work is needed for designs and some metals. director cohen: the engineer estimate figure, when we were most recently changing the scope of phase one to include the train box, there had been a previous estimates which i do not recall. the hope was that this would be potential to realize some

significant savings in the overall funding plan for the project. do you recall how this lined up with how that estimate was four, five months ago? >> the estimate has always been around the $200 mark. that is part of the $400 million that is part of the train box. i did not really expect a huge savings. this is very technical. this work has to be done to the highest standards. we cannot afford to have any short cuts. chairman fordthe contractor is . if they would like to speak? chairman ford: yes, that would be appropriate. >> good morning, directors. i am the project manager.

we are honored and excited to be considered to be a part of this landmark project. we have done similar work. we did a similar project in downtown seattle. we have a lot of experience in the west coast. i would also like to say that we have an excellent track record of increasing sbe participation throughout the project. our rfp participation goals are not set. we continue to work with out rich companies and continue to do everything we can to increase sbe percentages. we intend to work with bdi to continue outreach in order to secure additional sbe percentages. since the bit date, we have been

through additional participation with some of our major contractors, managed to identify an initial $3.5 million in sbe participation, which we plan to provide to local sbe's. $1 million of that is to trucking. we are ready to go, we have a lot of experience in this type of work, and we are honored to be a part of this project. chairman ford: thank you very much. madam executive director, it is my understanding that this protest has also been filed with the fta, at this point. so it is not just the tjpa. can we talk about that protest and what were the factors? >> i think i will have cheryl

address the board for that. chairman ford: one question before we get into that, sbe participation. on the top of the item, it says balfour beatty has included 24.3% sbe participation in its contract goal. but on the same page it says 24% sbe utilization goals. i am trying to reconcile those two numbers. page three. i just want to clarify that so i know exactly what we mean. >> [inaudible] chairman ford: so the goal is 24%. >> we submitted a lot of

paperwork in good faith to do that. some of the sbe's our vendors and only will take 60% of the number. the important thing is to get real contractors doing real work. they promise to make more effort. similar results came from two of the other three bidders. at least one produced a bid that said he could get to 24%, but again, there were four vendors there. chairman ford: and that was who? >> granite. chairman ford: the group that is protesting. >> that is part of their protest, yes. chairman ford: thank you. >> good morning, directors. city attorney.

on behalf of the tjpa. granite has submitted a bid protest to the tjpa. they followed up with a bid protest to the fta. basically, the tjpa issued a substantive response after the bid protest was filed. we submitted a response to the fta as well. we are waiting for fda's response. to become the fta reviews a bid protest based on whether or not they have followed procedures, whether there was any violation of federal law. in my review, i found it was fairly confident, the tjpa has

procedures to follow their own procedures and did not violate any law or regulation in making a the recommendation that is before you today. chairman ford: ok. any other questions? i understand we have an amended resolution related to this item. >> yes, the board secretary will read it item. >> the resolution has been revised to include three additional whereas clauses following the fifth clause. three additional read -- or as the low bidder joint venture challenged the bid, tjpa issued a bid. fta will issue a ruling or determination. whereas the subcontract will sell only be rewarded under this

conclusion subject to tjpa conclusion protest. the resolution is also amended to include an additional line to the first result which will stay the tjpa board of directors authorizes a trade contract for balfour beatty in the amount of $187 million subject to fda ruling. >> just in terms of the math, i am not sure that this is the healthiest way to look at it. the discrepancy on sbe participation is about 7%, but

the overall bid difference is 10%. i know this may not be the only issue granite has raised -- just, the math does not seem to work. we should try to meet our goals. at a certain point, we could take $20 million and give it to disadvantaged communities, where we would be doing more for those communities than by selecting a contract that is 10%, 7% higher sbe participation rate. i am not recommending -- >> i wanted to point out, at bit time, they came in at 17.3%.

they have since been identified and that the $3 million, so that number has gone up. as brian mentioned in the analysis of the sbe's that came in on the second lowest bidder, many of them weren't vendors. brian or sarah, maybe you can address that. -- many of them were vendors. >> i did not mean for my question to be addressed. chairman ford: in terms of the critical tasks on the project, but with a one-month delay in this mean? >> we are on schedule with the federal railroad administration. they have been overseeing the project since the award of the $400 million. they are expecting approval today. this would allow a review of the protest so that the contractor

can begin getting the permits and begin all the work they need to do. it is a complicated scope. maybe emilio can address the timing issue, but it is critical that we keep moving forward. >> program manager we did analyze the schedule. the work involved is necessary prior to the excavation because it creates the waterproofing of the area. shoring work needs to be completed before we can move into excavation. we have looked at the critical path submitted by webcor. that represents a day for day delay on the delivery of the project. if we were to wait one month to vote on the item, we would be delayed the entire project by one month. also, in the event that there might be a delay, looked at the

baseline schedule to see if we could we sequence work to take this off of the critical path. we have got through exercises and found that there is no way to get the shoring wall off the critical path. at this point, any delay is an overall delay in the program. >> which means money in the project. chairman ford: the overall project length? >> seven years 255 days. >> yes, but it is still money. as you know, we are tight on monday. there is no reason to delay it. -- on money. >> while construction does not begin in june, we're looking at a two phase of notice. the first would happen immediately after your vote, should you vote to approve this contract. balfour beatty would need to be ready for construction.

it would then have its mobilization. it basically needs to start next week in order to meet the june physical start, in order to keep the program on schedule. >> the engineer's estimate was $2.6 million. that was in our budget for this project? >> that is the engineer's estimate for the budget. chairman ford: we were 10% below are budgeted number, so any one month would drive us to what additional cost, in terms of this bid? >> we have not determined the actual cost of the one-month delay. chairman ford: but it should not exceed our original estimate which is in the budget for the original project? >> i could not tell you.

>> we are on schedule and we do not see a reason to delay. director cohen: i am interested in hearing from my colleagues. my instinct is, one, low bid matters. two, my understanding is this is an important part of the project. 3, i have great deference to the merits of the bid protest. so for all of those reasons, i would be strongly inclined to move forward with the contract right now. in a perfect world, we would have scheduled a closed session

based on the potential litigation so that we might have had the opportunity to push on council a bit harder. that is the purpose of that particular provision for closed session. i'm not convinced that delaying a month would have a truly material adverse impact on the project, but i'm also not convinced that delaying a month so we have a closed session at the end of the day -- i will probably still be differential to the opinion of the city attorney on the merits of the claim. i at least wanted to share with my colleagues that is what my thinking is, but i am quite interested in hearing what they're thinking is as well. director daly: