No Thank You

Six years ago, The Rhode Island Department of Transportation declined multiple offers from the company repairing the Washington Bridge to waterproof and button up other areas it had opened while doing repairs on the westbound side.

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In a three-page email exchange obtained by The Hummel Report, top officials of Cardi Corporation and the D.O.T. talked about the termination of Cardi’s $14.7 million contract to repair the bridge and what needed to be done to quickly wrap the project up and get traffic moving again across the bridge.

 

Cardi submitted 19 bullet points for potential action in the spring of 2019, after portions of the bridge were exposed to the elements for the first phase of repairs that began in 2016. The repair project was aimed at addressing chronic congestion problems by widening the lanes and adjusting ramps on the westbound side of the bridge.

 

But it ran into political headwinds in the summer of 2018 when the company narrowed lanes to do deck repairs, causing massive traffic backups to the state line in Massachusetts on Route 195. Gov. Gina Raimondo, who was up for reelection in November, pulled the plug on the project and Cardi had to repave lanes it had dug up to fully restore traffic.

 

Nearly a dozen times, according to a March 11, 2019  email between Cardi’s Dillon Fahey and the DOT’s Project Manager Anthony Pompei, the answer was ‘no’ from the agency to questions from Cardi about wrapping up outstanding loose ends of the years-long project.

 

The first question: “Do you want waterproofing in Phase 1?” No

 

It was followed by: “Do you want us to price and replace the scuppers as discussed in the meeting last week, for Phase 1?” No.

 

“Do you want us to install sub pavement drains in Phase 1?” No.

 

In an April 12, 2019 email,  Pompei told Richard Macksoud from Cardi: “As we discussed on the phone, the RIDOT is directing Cardi to proceed with the modified Phase 1 work as described in the questions and answers provided in the email chain below, with the intent to reopen all travel lanes and ramps at the completion of this work.”

 

Macksoud responded 15 minutes later: “Per our discussion, we will be proceeding Monday working toward a quick reopening of all the travel lanes on the bridge and demobilization from the site. Work will proceed as directed and documented in the attached email correspondence including current assumptions for joint closures.”

 

D.O.T inspection reports contain multiple pictures of decaying cement and corroded metal on the westbound side; for at least five years water had poured through the bridge and directly onto support rods. One of those rods was the reason the state abruptly closed the westbound side in December 2023 when an engineer found it had broken.

 

DOT also declined Cardi’s offer in 2019 to put fiber wrapping around the beams in the bridge’s post-tensioning system – something mentioned in D.O.T. inspection reports dating at least to 2010.

 

In 2016, AECOM Technical Services, one of the 13 defendants in the lawsuit the state of Rhode Island filed in 2024 against contractors that worked on the Washington Bridge, specified where the wrap should be.

 

Cardi, in the 2019 email, also offered to price and replace scuppers, but the D.O.T declined. A 292-page DOT-commissioned inspection report from July 2019 shows, among other things, clogged scuppers that prevented water from draining properly.

 

Despite the years of work it did on the bridge, Cardi’s involvement is mentioned only briefly in the 64-page draft analysis by Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associations, commissioned by the state in early 2024; the draft was completed four months before the state filed a lawsuit against the contractors. Attorney General Peter Neronha posted the document on the department’s website Friday, after the report began to surface on social media.

 

The report outlines half a dozen repairs Cardi was supposed to perform when it was awarded the contract in 2016, including concrete and beam repairs, deck repairs, and membrane waterproofing.

 

The analysis notes that Cardi’s target completion date was October 2019 and that WJE was given access to contract and bid documentation and design plans.

 

It adds: “However, WJE received very limited access to information regarding the execution of the construction” – and does not mention the communications between Cardi and the D.O.T. obtained by The Hummel Report.

 

WJE concludes: “The contractor (Cardi) was required to replace the removed joint seals and return the deck to traversable condition. Eventually RIDOT cancelled the contract with most of the repairs not completed, including (fiber reinforced polymer) strengthening and link slab replacement.”

 

The Hummel Report asked the D.O.T. why it declined to take Cardi up on its offer for waterproofing and other wrap-up measures in 2019? We also asked if the three-page email exchange between Cardi and the department was provided to Wiss Janney?

 

Charles St. Martin, a spokesman for D.O.T. replied Wednesday in an email: “Given the ongoing lawsuit, RIDOT will not be commenting on the contents of the forensic audit or steps leading up to the closure.”

 

Meanwhile, the Hummel Report has also obtained a Sept. 8 email that one of the defendant’s attorneys sent the other defendants noting that she had received the WJE report after issuing a subpoena to the company for it and would be sending the report to each counsel. The companies then received the report over the course of the following week before it became public last week.

 

That means the defendants did not have the document when four of them asked Superior Court Judge Brian J. Stern to dismiss the case in August.

 

Gov. McKee provided this response to the Journal after Neronha made the WJE report public on Friday.

“As part of the legal case, this report was previously provided by my administration to the state’s attorneys handling the case and later shared by our attorneys with the defendants during the discovery process. The court has denied the defendants’ motions to dismiss this case, determining that it is worthy of moving forward. We are going to allow that process to continue.”

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The Hummel Report is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that relies, in part, on donations. For more information, go to HummelReport.org. Reach Jim at Jim@HummelReport.org.