The jail design build contracts in Chatham and Madison Counties have been a continuing source of discussion here on slabbed and elsewhere in cyberspace. Concerned gave some background on the Madison County Jail Project here. Citizen asked specifically about the Madison County NC project later on the same thread.
Since I’m coming back off a long holiday weekend I’m going to be lazy and post a few links I found googling with little of my own commentary. I have the word out among my Carolina construction cyber friends in case anything else surfaces. As always we thank Bellesouth for searching and sharing the PACER docs on this case. We checked late last week there has been no activity since Moultrie polygraph motion was turned down by Judge Mills.
In researching this case I’m getting the feeling that Ronnie Musgrove was not the only politician to receive money from The Facility Group’s ownership and management. Now with the indictments here in Mississippi Moultrie and his company have become somewhat radioactive.
Construction companies can fail on a dime if the marketplace loses confidence in the ability of the contractor to deliver, especially in multi year projects. I do not know enough about TFG to say if they are strong enough to survive this rough patch.
Here is a story on TFG losing the Chatham County Jail project. Here is one from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on losing the Madison County Jail Project plus a bit of background on Moultrie and TFG.
In 1986, Robert Moultrie opened a food facility engineering firm with five employees and a big ambition.
By 2008, Facility Group had morphed into a well-oiled building machine with nearly 450 employees overseeing construction of jails, schools, courthouses and industrial plants. It has nearly doubled in size since 2006 alone, billing nearly $440 million a year.
In recent years, Moultrie and Facility Group seemed to be everywhere. Moultrie held political fund-raisers and high-end charity benefits at his lavish home in south Cobb County. He wielded credibility and influence in political spheres, aided by well-connected political figures who work for him, such as retired Cobb Sheriff Bill Hutson and state Rep. Earl Ehrhart, who is chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee and a marketing executive at the firm.
Here is an excerpt from an unflattering article on how TFG conducted business:
A Tennessee sheriff whose county hired The Facility Group to design and build its jail in the 1990s says representatives of the Georgia company “came in and dazzled” members of the jail commission tasked with overseeing the process.
But once picked to build the 302-bed capacity jail in Maryville, the Facility Group made cuts in areas Sheriff James Lee Berrong thought critical, he said.
In fact, Berrong said his department is now facing a civil lawsuit directly related to cuts pushed through during construction by the Facility Group.
The story continues:
Berrong, the Tennessee sheriff who works every day in a jail built by The Facility Group, told The News-Record & Sentinel that “I can’t see any benefit” for having paid more to have the company oversee the construction of his jail.
“Even today we’re experiencing” problems, he said. “We put in substandard elevators. We don’t have water fountains” anywhere in the sheriff’s department.
Based on recommendations from jail designers, the 302-capacity jail should have 80 cameras for observation and safety, he said. “On one day (The Facility Group) cut out 60 cameras,” he said. “We were left with 20 cameras. We’re experiencing a lawsuit right now, because we didn’t have camera in the pat-down area.”
Berrong said: “In any corrections facility, the pat-down room and your intake is the most vulnerable part. We wanted four cameras in the intake and one in the pat down. We got one bad-angle camera” to cover both areas.
He also said one other change negatively impacted his ability to house prisoners. “… Consultants (suggested) a certain type of mesh fence” to secure two outdoor recreation areas, but “The Facility Group just put a chain-link fence there,” Berrong said.
“We had five people scale that fence in the first year. One went to France and one to Central America. We spent $18,000 to fix it, when it would have cost $10,000 to do it right the first time,” he said. “The county ended up spending at least $20,000-$40,000 on searches” for the escapees, he said.
Mickey Walker, a Blount County commissioner when the jail was built, said “there was no single decision made by a single person” regarding who would design and build the jail. He said he couldn’t remember the names of The Facility Group executives involved in the project, but that he didn’t remember particularly any pressures to hire them.
Madison County Sheriff John Ledford said he had no knowledge of The Facility Group before their representatives showed up at the commission meeting.