Steel supplier demands $4m from New Rochelle JV

A steel supplier has sued a New Rochelle joint venture for $4 million for allegedly failing to pay for cost overruns on the $1.4 billion Newark Liberty International Airport redevelopment project.

Owen Steel Company Inc. accused Tutor Perini / Parsons JV of professional negligence and other charges in a complaint filed Sept. 6 in Westchester Supreme Court.

“The defendants negligently designed the construction documents,” the complaint states, “in that there were errors, inconsistencies and omissions which required revisions to the design beyond what Owen Steel could have reasonably anticipated or inferred.”

Tutor Perini Corp., based in Sylmar, California, and Parsons Transportation Group Inc., of Centreville, Virginia, did not reply to an email asking for their side of the story.

The joint venture was based at Tutor Perini’s New Rochelle office.

In 2018, the joint venture hired Owen Steel for $77.9 million to fabricate and install structural steel for the airport project. The contract required the Columbia, South Carolina company to convert raw steel into customized components.

Most of the steel went into the main terminal. The rest was used for a bridge to the departures area, a canopy over the bridge, a pedestrian bridge between the terminal and a parking garage, and a small generator building.

Owen Steel was given 29 weeks to buy the steel, prepare shop drawings, and fabricate 15,433 tons of steel for the main terminal. But almost immediately after giving the steel company the go-ahead, the complaint states, the joint venture put a hold on the drawings to make changes. And when Owen Steel was scheduled to begin erecting steel, designs were still being changed.

The new drawings added 1,250 tons of steel to the main terminal design, and the joint venture added $12.4 million to the contract and extended the completion date.

But once again, Owen Steel claims, the joint venture issued another set of drawings to correct errors and omissions that added 700 tons of steel requiring another 12,000 shop hours to finish the work.

The joint venture added $10.2 million to the contract, according to the complaint, but denied Owen Steel’s request for more time to implement changes.

Instead, the joint venture “repeatedly denied, threatened and directed Owen Steel to proceed ‘as fast as possible’ to fabricate and erect the steel.”

Owen Steel claims that delays in releasing design drawings also added 19 months to its 24-month steel contract schedule.

The steel company incurred extra costs as a result of the changes and delays, according to the complaint, but the joint venture “has failed and refused to address the costs in good faith.”