METRO dumps one contractor for another

I've been hearing rumblings about this for a while, and today, it happened. In a hastily called press conference this afternoon METRO dropped a major announcement:  It's parting ways with its current contractor, and going with another company.

METRO CEO Frank Wilson held the press conference.  He announced that after spending $77 million dollars with the Washington Group (WGI), METRO is switching to Parsons.  Wilson insists that everything is on schedule, and the transition will be a smooth one.  He also tried to convince a skeptical press corps that since METRO owns all of the work done by WGI up to this point, none of the money spent up until now has been lost.  So, why did METRO decide to dump WGI? Here are the three main reasons.

1.  Too expensive.  Apparently, the price WGI wanted for contract work is "hundreds of millions" higher that what was quoted in the original METRO Solutions plan.

2. Not willing to assume enough risk.  This is another disagreement on money, mainly, how much risk WGI was willing to shoulder should something go wrong during construction.

3. Not sensitive to local minority sub-contractor process.  Wilson says WGI didn't really understand and wasn't willing to be sensitive to local sub-contractors.

METRO insists the change will be better for tax payers, because nobody wants sub par work. It also insists that everything is on schedule.  However, I did find it peculiar that it was unwilling to tell us what the news conference was about until we got there.  METRO didn't even tell some of its own Vice Presidents what the topic was about.  Nobody at City Hall, including the Mayor's office, was told about the news conference either.