A 21-page audit has found that the City of Dallas is not consistently monitoring and inspecting road projects.
The audit’s focus was to review the efficiency of the Department of Public Works’ Road Pavement Management Program. The program is responsible for designing, constructing, and maintaining the city’s roads.
The audit found that Public Works regularly fails to conduct required strength testing on newly finished road projects to ensure the streets will not fail in the future. In fact, of the sixteen randomly selected street maintenance and road resurfacing projects observed, the audit found only one had files that evidenced “required compression strength testing.”
Only four of the projects analyzed maintained regular daily progress reports throughout construction. These reports include information about weather conditions, potential quality concerns, and a summary of the amount of labor and equipment used. None of the projects analyzed had a detailed construction schedule to ensure that these road projects were completed in a timely manner.
As far as costs, the audit found that the city does not keep track of the reason for excess spending. Dallas paid $15 million above estimated construction costs for six road projects and did not document the reasons for the surplus spending. The audit shows that Public Works fails to consistently review the invoiced amount of materials for projects.
“As such, there is an increased risk of fraudulent activities or improper payment to contractors,” the audit said.
Two contractors handled all the projects analyzed; Heritage Materials LLC and Texas Materials Inc.
The audit offers numerous recommendations. One is to implement new procedures to specify when required inspections tests must occur. Another is to require field observations of individual projects to provide more accurate estimates.
Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax responded to the audit in a memo, saying the city plans to implement most, but not all, of the audit’s recommendations for all road projects.
Broadnax told Axios that the city would not conduct field observations of projects to ensure more accurate cost estimates, as that would require hiring five additional employees.
The audit comes days after the Dallas City Council approved a plan to build a $2 billion piece of infrastructure in the form of the new convention center.