Further facts about school construction and Gallagher Construction Management, and more thoughts on the Lancaster School District bond election

Gallagher Construction Management Services has been used, and is being used now, for both school district and civic project construction in many places around the Metroplex.

There are both good and bad sides to both the agency method and the construction manager at risk method of construction management.

An obvious rule of thumb is, the bigger the construction project, the more there is that can go wrong, and especially the more higher-dollar things there are that can go wrong. Beyond “going wrong,” the bigger, and longer, a project, the more susceptible it is to inflationary spikes, material shortages, etc.

With construction manager at risk system, then, that means smaller and smaller margins. Now, I don’t have any figures, but I’m guessing that a majority of construction managers here in Texas use the agency system for that reason. For companies the size of Gallagher or larger, companies big enough to comfortably handle projects the size of Lancaster’s 2004 bond construction, I’m guessing two out of three are agency type.

If Jeff Melcher understands agency-contract construction managers, he would know that they don’t eat inflationary costs. That does make them more of a gamble if you hit inflationary spikes; on the other hand, it normally means a lower baseline for a contract. If he understands geopolitics as he presents himself as doing, he would know that the explosion of the Chinese economy, even without the oil price boom, would have spiked steel and concrete costs, and increased their scarcity. Having a brother and nephew who work in the Oil Patch, I know that firsthand. I explained that in an editorial this summer

Either Jeff doesn’t know these points, whether from not being so attentive to world affairs, failure to read my editorial on the subject, or whatever, or it doesn’t matter to him, and he’s going to fire away at Gallagher no matter what.

That said, any district that uses the agency method is rolling the dice, to be true. The Waxahachie City Council had an extensive discussion on the different methods before hiring Gallagher.

But, and not to make light of how inflation hit Lancaster — other entities gambled the same way, not just with Gallagher, but other agency-based construction management companies. International companies got caught buying short on both steel and concrete, far beyond local school districts and construction projects. There was NO CONSPIRACY with Lancaster school construction.

Also, as far as cost overruns, there’s plenty of them in private sector construction, too. Just like the private insurance industry has even more of the dreaded “waste and fraud” than Medicare, Jeff. Sorry, but governments just aren’t always the corrupt, or inept, monsters that many conservatives make them out to be.

As far as Gallagher’s specific bona fides, they were used just south of here several years ago to oversee the construction of the Waxahachie Civic Center. Several organizations from the communities of the Best Southwest have rented that place since it opened, with no complaints about its construction. As far as its construction management, I’m not familiar with details, but to the best of my knowledge, the city of Waxahachie had no major complaints about that.

Other work of the company includes the city of Farmer’s Branch recreation center, work at both Garland and South Garland high schools, as separate projects, separate times and different architects. (No, in case Jeff or anybody else is wondering, Gallagher is not a Siamese twin of Corgan.)

A list of Gallagher projects completed by the end of 2003 is here; as one can see, Corgan partnered with Gallagher on less than 20 percent of these.

And, no, the Lancaster 2004 bond issue is not the biggest project Gallagher has managed, either, lest Jeff or someone else think the company got over its head in Lancaster. (That, at least, would be a rational, non-conspiratorial argument.) Forney ISD had a total of $142 million in various projects that Gallagher oversaw.

Before getting into construction management in the mid-1900s, Gallagher was a general contractor for about 30 years.

There; there’s some research, Jeff. It includes links. Yes, the majority of them are from Gallagher’s website, but, where better to get information on actual projects they’ve done.

Given all of these different school districts and cities for whom Gallagher has worked, for a decade or better, Jeff, if it had a history of financial irregularities, The Dallas Morning News, with its depth of staff and greater ability to investigate such things (not that I haven’t done investigative journalism at smaller newspapers, Jeff) would have reported something. And, you know what, Jeff? The News hasn’t. That ought to tell you something right there — if you’re willing to listen.

Unfortunately, whether during early voting or on Election Day, for Lancaster voters, there will be just two sides on this issue; there is no “neutral, but let’s reason out something better” on the ballot. In the editorial, I deplore both the apocalyptic comments of Superintendent Larry Lewis, on the one hand, threatening to put children into residents’ living rooms, and the conspiracy thinking of people like Jeff Melcher on the other, insinuating that a Canadian bank stood posed to take over the Lancaster School District should this bond be voted in.

The third side would be the assembly of a citizens council including NO representatives from either the school district or the long-known Committee Against Virtually Everything, or C.A.V.E. people. Sorry, not my invention; I know my predecessor as Lancaster Today editor, Chuck Bloom, whose tenure as either staff writer or editor stretches back to before the 1994 tornado, used it repeatedly, though I don’t believe he’s the one who invented it, either. (Of course, C.A.V.E. could also stand for Conspiracies Are Virtually Everywhere.)

Now, I am not as harsh as Chuck; I do not totally believe in this label, and I know how labels can at times be beat-down tools. But, on an issue like this, it seems to gain more validity by the day, if not the hour.

Unfortunately, that isn’t likely to happen. Given the latest ramp-up on the conspiratorial side, including what I see as financial insinuations against yours truly in his last paragraph, I doubt Melcher will support ANY bond issue, at least as long as Lewis is here. Jeff, you’re welcome to tell me otherwise. You're certainly welcome, snark aside, to offer actual evidence of any financial wrongdoing of which you are aware

And, unfortunately, he and Larry Lewis are probably going to wind up being each other’s tar babies.