New Rochelle contractor demands $100M for faulty airport designs

A New Rochelle construction company is demanding $100 million from an engineering firm it claims botched designs for a $2 billion-plus Newark Liberty International Airport project.

Tutor Perini / Parsons J.V. (TPP) charged STV Inc. with breach of contract in a complaint filed Dec. 7 in Westchester Supreme Court.

“The large number of the design changes and the timing of when STV issued those design changes resulted,” the complaint states, in “project delays and inefficient conditions … and poor morale on the job site.”

STV spokesperson Aaron Jones replied in an email that “STV is proud of this highly successful project and the critically important contribution of its design to that success.”

TPP is a joint venture of Tutor Perini Corp., of Sylmar, California, and Parsons Transportation Group Inc., of Centreville, Virginia. It is based at Tutor Perini’s offices on Main Street in New Rochelle.

STV is a Manhattan engineering firm that specializes in transportation infrastructure.

The airport project included a new terminal, parking garage, pedestrian walkway and highway bridge.

In 2018, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey hired TPP to design and build the project. TPP hired STV as the project architect and engineer, for $58.3 million.

TPP claims STV failed to fulfill its contract obligations.

After STV released its final design drawings in 2019, for instance, the firm issued about 200 bulletins “to correct their own design errors or omissions,” according to the complaint.

STV changed the electrical systems, heating and ventilation, plumbing, and fire protection, according to the complaint, and thus delayed construction, created extra work and unnecessary overtime, and increased project costs.

After concrete floors had been poured, for example, they had to be flattened because of alleged design errors that caused the steel reinforcement to deflect excessively.

TPP says it had to issue more than 5,600 requests for information, “well beyond industry standards,” to get more clarification from STV about the designs.

“It often took weeks, and sometimes months, and even occasionally years, for final resolutions to be provided by STV,” the complaint states.

The joint venture says STV over-designed portions of the project, such as additional structures for a thermal piping system.

It accused STV of providing incomplete models of how project components related or connected to one another.

TPP tallied $99,534,491 in alleged losses: design errors and omissions, $71.7 million; unnecessary or over-designed features, $20.5 million; incomplete modeling, $7.4 million.

“We are confident,” STV spokesperson Jones said, “that these commercial disputes will be resolved in STV’s favor through the judicial process.”