Significant delays of possibly up to six months are now expected for the $19-million police headquarters project, which town officials attribute in part to issues with the architectural drawings and the contractor.
Appearing before the Board of Selectmen on Tuesday, April 22, Wilton’s Department of Public Works Assistant Director/Facilities Manager Jeff Pardo said that one of the “major issues” is a project supervisor with A. Secondino and Son, Inc. who Pardo said refuses to provide more coordination between workers.
“This super does not like to hold coordination meetings,” Pardo said. “I don’t know why. I’ve asked him for them. His trades have asked him. He doesn’t want to hold them. The trades all complain to me. It’s poor communication.”
Pardo said he has advised the supervisor from the Branford-based company, which won the town’s contracting bid in September 2023, to bring everybody “into the trailer once a week” to coordinate their work and schedules.
“He doesn’t do that, and all of a sudden two guys are in the same area at the same time, and he has to tell one, ‘Alright, you hold off while this guy works,'” Pardo said.
“If you had coordination meetings, you would have all that figured out and everybody would know where they’re gonna be,” he said.
Construction of the new building on the Town Hall campus was started in February 2024, and was scheduled for completion around June or July of this year.
Pardo gave an example of a problem that happened earlier in the day on Tuesday, on the second floor of the new headquarters. An electrician had prematurely attached his conduits to the studs in a wall before sheetrock work was completed, but he had to remove all the work he had just completed so that the sheetrock contractor could finish attaching sheetrock in that area.
“If you had a coordination meeting, that never would have happened,” Pardo said, adding that he had pointed out the issue to the construction supervisor “many times.”
He also stated that the project manager with A. Secondino and Son, Inc., whom he did not name, is only in contact with him about once a month.
“The project manager I never talk to,” Pardo said. “I mean, if he shows up to a job meeting virtually, it’s maybe once a month … He never walks through the building and it’s not a good thing. I’ve never had a project manager not walk through a building.”
Pardo said he couldn’t speak about A. Secondino and Son, Inc., as a whole, but shared that this has been his experience.
“I can only speak about the people I’m working with,” he said.
Pardo also cited issues with the architect and, in particular, the drawings on which the original bids were based.
“I hate to say this publicly, but I’ll say it. The drawings are very vague. They were incomplete. That set should never have gone out to bid,” Pardo said, “so it’s a battle every day.”
He said the supervisor from A. Secondino and Son, Inc., regularly complains that there is no information on the drawings, forcing Pardo to then reach out to the architects, who are slow to respond.
“The architects are not always Johnny-on-the-Spot,” he said. “They’re not always providing the information as quickly as we would like to have it … so that’s an issue.”
First Selectman Toni Boucher said that part of this discussion would have to take place in executive session at the BOS meeting on May 20.
“There’s only so much we can go into tonight … Too much of this information has to do with contracts,” she said.
In addition, while DPW Director Frank Smeriglio said that not much had changed regarding costs since the BOS reviewed the project’s budget last month, and that no new change orders have been presented, Pardo said more will be coming.
Smeriglio confirmed that the project will definitely be delayed.
“They are not going to be finished by June/July,” he said. “They have been asking about September/October. We have not given them an approval on that, and I think discussions on why they’ve gone over, what we plan to do, and the effects of all that, that is the main reason why we shouldn’t talk about that in this session. It should be in executive session.”
Pardo said the building is more than 50% complete, but there’s still so much that needs to be done.
“But I’ll be completely honest with you,” he said. “I think September/October is a long shot. I don’t see it happening. I think it’ll be closer to November/December.”
“I’ve told the super this, (that) we have our concerns,” Pardo said.
“That’s why we need to go into executive session with attorneys,” he said.
“Who knows? Maybe they do get it done,” Pardo said, citing 20 workers onsite on a typical day.
“I just don’t see it happening,” he said. “There’s so much work left.”
Selectwoman Kim Healy had requested that the architect from Tecton Architects be in attendance on Tuesday night, but Pardo said they would have had little to offer to the discussion.
“Tecton walks through that building for one hour every two weeks,” he said. “I walk through that building three times a day for an hour. No one has a better handle on what’s going on in that job than I do.”
Pardo noted there had also been some disagreements with A. Secondino and Son, Inc., over the company’s billing process.
“Things are just very vague,” he said, noting that he has to err on the side of being conservative when it comes to their requisitions, because it’s not always clear whether the things they’re billing for are completed.
“I can’t let you bill for something that is incomplete,” Pardo said he has told them.
“That’s one of the battles I have every single month,” he said, noting that it was A. Secondino and Son, Inc., that wanted to handle the requisitions the way they’re being organized.
Asked whether the delay would have an adverse impact on police operations, Deputy Police Chief Robert Cipolla said it would not.
“We just want the building to be done right,” he said. “We’re in our current space, so it’s not like we’re in a time crunch or renting property anywhere.”
“I don’t see any real negative implication for us from an operational standpoint,” Cipolla said.
GOOD Morning Wilton has reached out to A. Secondino and Son for a reaction to Pardo’s comments and will update the story once someone responds.
Pathetic. How does a project go from on schedule/day 1 to behind 6 months? What was going on at week 1….2…..5…12 weeks of delays and now 24 weeks? And let me guess, the contractor and architects are all paid up despite the delays? Public sector bs.
This suggests someone, or someone’s are in over their head, and as the town moves into a time when we have many many large projects ahead of us it seems we really need to consider if the appropriate people are in the right roles to avoid this becoming the norm.