The V.I. Public Finance Authority’s Office of Disaster Recovery is pushing ahead with the “Rebuild USVI” initiative, issuing a bid package this week for three projects on St. John while it fights a lawsuit that claims its recent award of a $137 million contract to oversee the territory’s disaster recovery work violated federal procurement regulations and conflict of interest rules.
The PFA rejected those claims and last week filed a motion to dismiss the suit by Hill International, which is seeking a temporary restraining order to stay the three-year contract that was awarded to CH2M until the matter is settled. The PFA has also filed a motion for a protective order and is seeking leave to file documents under seal in the Hill complaint, claiming it needs to protect “source selection information, confidential and proprietary trade secret information, and/or any other competitively sensitive information.”
According to the complaint, the enormous disparity between Hill’s bid of just over $30 million to oversee some $16.7 billion in disaster recovery work and CH2M’s bid of $137 million “is so great as to make the award to CH2M arbitrary and capricious,” especially since the evaluation committee scored Hill highest of all as to “cost effectiveness” and second-highest overall of the nine participating bidders.
Moreover, the committee that evaluated the bids included three officials from the Public Works Department, where CH2M’s corporate parent, Jacobs Solutions Inc., has employees embedded, Hill alleges in a 30-page brief filed Sept. 26.
Additionally, the PFA lacked the statutory authority to award the contract at all, which under Virgin Islands Rules and Regulations is the sole purview of the Property and Procurement Department, according to Hill’s brief.
The scope of work includes project and construction management for the rebuilding of schools, office buildings, roads, drainage systems, essential services facilities, hospitals and other infrastructure that was damaged or destroyed by the twin Category 5 hurricanes of 2017.
The money for the territory’s reconstruction is mostly a mix of Federal Emergency Management Agency grants and Community Development Block Grants administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In January, Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. announced the Rebuild USVI initiative to expedite the recovery by consolidating the work under a “Super Project Management Office,” hence the contract that is now in dispute.
The PFA has denied the allegations, saying it chose the company that represented the best value for the territory, not the lowest price, and that Hill did not meet all the technical requirements. It has also vociferously denied the conflict-of-interest claims, and said delaying the work will risk missing the deadline to spend the federal relief dollars within 10 years.
Among other arguments in its motion calling for the case to be dismissed with prejudice (meaning it may not be brought again), the PFA defended its right to solicit and award contracts as a public corporation and “autonomous governmental instrumentality,” just like the West Indian Company Ltd. and the V.I. Housing Authority.
Moreover, “Hill did not object to the issuance of the RFP by VIPFA through a pre-award bid protest or submit a question or concern to the RFP asking VIPFA to relinquish its contract authority to DPP,” and only raised concerns after it lost the job to CH2M, the motion states.
“Even if Hill was injured by the award of the contract to another company, Hill never alleges, let alone demonstrates, a causal link between this outcome and the fact that VIPFA, instead of DPP, was the procuring authority. In other words, Plaintiff failed to allege that the outcome would have been different if DPP had been the procuring agency,” it says.
On Monday, the PFA’s Office of Disaster Recovery released a solicitation for the third bundle of projects under the Rebuild USVI initiative, for the Myrah Keating Community Health Center, Morris deCastro Health Clinic, and the first preK-12 school on St. John.
“Since the Governor’s announcement during his 2024 State of the Territory address, which highlighted the need for a more innovative approach to expedite the timeline for the recovery’s massive reconstruction effort, the ODR has prioritized the release of two other bundles — for healthcare facilities on St. Croix and educational facilities on St. Thomas as well as project and construction management services to support” the Super Project Management Office staff, the release announcing the St. John Request for Proposal stated.
The latter contract — for project and construction management services — is the one awarded to CH2M in August.
Still to come is a solicitation for “the horizontal bundle for Northside Road on St. Croix, incorporating water, sewer, and powerline undergrounding systems as well as post-construction roadway repair and drainage improvements,” the release stated.
Contractors interested in bidding on the St. John bundle — RFP 008-2024 — must attend a virtual pre-bid conference on Oct. 16 and participate in mandatory site visits on Oct. 23, it said. Details are provided in the bid package, which is available by request via email to procurements@usvipfa.com.
