In his memo, the Kiewit manager pointed out that in the half-dozen years since the first risers were installed, not a single one of the diffuser heads sitting on the ocean floor had been damaged. What’s more, he said, there hadn’t even been a recorded close call with an errant anchor during this long stretch, which incidentally had included at least one “storm of the century.” Also, the U.S. Coast Guard was prepared to institute additional safety measures aimed at keeping ship anchors away from the diffusers.
In his reply, Corkum said66 the Coast Guard’s “no anchor” zone was all well and good, but the real risk would be from a ship losing its rudder in a storm. If a captain feared his boat was about to capsize, he wouldn’t be worried about violating a “no anchor” zone marked on a map. Some ship captains coming into Boston Harbor likely wouldn’t even be able to read English, he noted. Corkum invoked the freighter crash67 in New Orleans, in which language problems between the American pilot and the Chinese crew may have made matters worse. Even though the pilot had ordered that both of the freighter’s anchors be lowered, the crew had dropped only one. Despite dragging that anchor, Corkum wrote, the freighter “still careened into a mall.” Corkum rejected Kiewit’s request to pull the plugs during cleanup, insisting that “all work in the tunnel be complete before the off-take plugs are removed.”
The irony is that each side claimed worker safety was its primary concern. Corkum, writing on behalf of Kaiser and the MWRA, said it would be unwise to endanger the lives of up to a hundred sandhogs by leaving the tunnel vulnerable to a possible flood during the long cleanup period. Kiewit, meanwhile, said it would be insane to put a small number of workers at extreme risk by sending them into a tunnel that had no air or light, all in the name of protecting a larger group of workers from an exceedingly small risk. By waiting until the end to pull the plugs, the Kiewit manager wrote, risk of catastrophe68 would be exponentially higher!”
In frustration, Kiewit enlisted a former OSHA inspector named Fred Anderson as a consultant. In his report, Anderson stressed that the stakes were “enormous in terms of both money69 and political necessity.” By insisting on installing backup plugs without a clear understanding of how they would be removed, the parties involved in the project had painted themselves into a corner, he wrote. But the tunnel would not be viable if they couldn’t figure out a safe way to yank out the plugs. “They must come out!”
After reading the contract closely, Anderson noted, it was clear that the people who wrote the specs intended for the plugs to be removed by a crew “dependent on self-contained breathing apparatus in an unknown and uncontrollable environment.” He stressed, “To me, this is a scary prospect.” He warned that the hazardous assignment could cost lives. And if workers died, regulatory agencies would likely shut down the tunnel, adding further delays. Anderson strongly advised Kiewit to stand firm and insist on pulling the plugs before removing the ventilation, lighting, and rail systems. Asking workers to venture nearly ten miles into a dark, unventilated tunnel hundreds of feet below the ocean, he said, would be sentencing them to “an operation somewhat akin to a spacewalk.”
In response to Corkum’s rejection of the request to remove the plugs during cleanup, Kiewit in December declared an “emergency” in the contract70. Company managers cited their consultant’s advice and word from the Boston Fire Department that it would not provide rescue services for a plug-removal mission if the tunnel’s utilities had already been removed. Corkum replied that there was no such emergency and directed Kiewit “to not remove or otherwise compromise71 the off-take plugs at this time.”
At the start of 1998, after the yearlong memo war had produced little more than a mountain of paper, the MWRA tried for a fresh start by convening a brainstorming session with all the major players. A high-ranking Kiewit executive72 who had flown in from Omaha began the session with a blunt question to the MWRA: “What do you want us to do?” The MWRA manager demurred, saying he didn’t have the extensive experience that the Kiewit folks had. The Kiewit executive countered that no one had experience in the kind of mission they were discussing.
As earnest as the MWRA manager was in trying to forge a consensus with all the bright minds around the table, the forces working against him had grown potent. Researchers in organizational behavior73 point out that as trust levels go down within a group, group members’ creativity and willingness to seek new options also decrease. When intense time pressures are added to the mix, opposing sides tend to become even more fixed in their positions, relying more on cognitive shortcuts. They’re unable to work collaboratively to solve a problem because they have become locked in an adversarial contest: If you win, I lose. But with both sides so hardened in their positions, all they were doing was ensuring that they’d have to spend more time together in the tunnel.
For years, Kiewit had kept a large sign hanging near the opening to the Deer Island shaft. It featured the joint venture’s logo surrounded by the words good air, good light, good housekeeping, good safety. Now the Kiewit managers felt they were being asked to risk that last attribute by sending workers in without the benefit of the first two.
But Corkum saw something entirely different in Kiewit. He feared that financial concerns were driving the company’s interest in pulling the plugs during cleanup. After all, as much as Kiewit framed its arguments in the context of worker safety, it was indisputable that removing the plugs while the contractor already had crews in that section of the tunnel, supported by plenty of air and light and transportation, would also be the cheapest route. “They’re bleeding money like no tomorrow on this job,” Corkum would explain later, “and all they want is out.”
This, Corkum believed, was one of the realities of lump-sum, low-bid construction, the way most public works projects are bid across the country. To win the contract, a company has to bid the bare minimum. But then that contractor can make a profit on the job only if its costs turn out to be unusually low. Accordingly, if the contract called for X, Corkum expected Kiewit would try to do the very bare minimum of X, while he viewed his job as making sure the owner got the maximum. He suspected that Kiewit, in aggressively pushing to remove the plugs and utilities early, was engaging in a game of chicken. If it pulled down enough of the bag line and there was still no good option for removing the safety plugs without ventilation, maybe Corkum would simply relent and let Kiewit yank the plugs at the same time.
As Corkum progressed in his night classes for law school, he found new reasons to worry. If he read about some obscure legal maneuver, he’d immediately wonder if Kiewit’s high-priced lawyers would employ it to try to extricate the contractor from its hole. Corkum’s friends joked that he didn’t have to attend class because he was getting his education in the law right on the job. His contracts class taught him the dangers of weighing in too much on a responsibility that was assigned to another party in a contract. The more you touched something, the more liability you assumed. That thinking informed his reluctance to come out and tell Kiewit exactly which approach to take in pulling the plugs.
66 (Chapter 3, note 20)
In his reply, Corkum said: Dave Corkum, memo to contractor Kiewit-Atkinson-Kenny, “Subject: Removal of Diffuser Safety Plugs,” November 22, 1997.
67 (Chapter 3, note 21)
Corkum invoked the freighter crash: Corkum noted, both at the time and in subsequent interviews with the author, the likelihood that many captains sailing into Boston Harbor might not understand English. But in his letter to Kiewit invoking the New Orleans incident, he did not specifically mention the role that language may have played.
68 (Chapter 3, note 22)
69 (Chapter 3, note 23)
“enormous in terms of both money”: Fred Anderson, occupational safety consultant hired by Kiewit, memo to Robert Regazzini, November 28, 1997.
70 (Chapter 3, note 24)
an “emergency” in the contract: Robert Regazzini, memo to Dave Corkum, “Subject: Removal of Diffuser Safety Plugs, FTM No. 282-2304, Notice of Defective Specification and Emergency Situation Under Article 6.21 of the General Conditions,” December 16, 1997.
71 (Chapter 3, note 25)
“to not remove or otherwise compromise”: Dave Corkum, memo to contractor Kiewit, “Subject: Response to CTM 282-1136,” December 19, 1997.
72 (Chapter 3, note 26)
A high-ranking Kiewit executive: Kiewit-Atkinson-Kenny, AJV, “Minutes of Hemispherical Plug Removal Meeting—MWRA Headquarters,” January 19, 1998. The Kiewit executive was Jerry Toll. The MWRA’s Charlie Button ran the meeting.
73 (Chapter 3, note 27)
Researchers in organizational behavior: I’m particularly grateful to Don Gibson, dean of the Fairfield University School of Business, for the insight he provided during a January 2011 interview.