2 April 2004
Bruce Jackson
Parsons 1, Cannon 0
Anyone who has ever been involved in or studied divorce, war or a homicide trial knows that both sides always have excellent reasons justifying them having done or doing the things they did or are doing now, but that those reasons alone just about never tell you the truth of anything. An explanation of something is just that and no more: an explanation. Complex events almost always have multiple explanations, and there is often no telling which of those explanations, if any of them, has anything to do with the truth of the matter.
That’s what I got to thinking last Thursday after listening to Bruce Campbell, deputy project manager of the Peace Bridge Expansion Project, explain to the Bi-National Peace Bridge Task Force why Figg Engineering of Florida, one of the Project's three design consultants, had been dumped and Parsons Bridge and Tunnel had been hired.
More accurately, Campbell said that the Buffalo News story the previous day saying that Figg had been dumped was inaccurate. Figg hadn’t been dumped. Its involvement had just been downgraded. A lot. Almost all the way. That was because after the death of the driving genius of that firm, Gene Figg, only one person in the firm had been closely connected with the Peace Bridge project, a bridge engineer named Bradley Touchstone. Touchstone, Campbell said, had left Figg and was now connected with Parsons Bridge and Tunnel division, so the Expansion Project had downgraded its involvement with Figg and had set up this new relationship with Parsons.
I asked if that meant that Parsons had replaced Figg as one of the three design companies. Not at all, Campbell said. The relationship was with Bradley Touchstone, who happens to work for Parsons, so there was a relationship with Parsons but that was just because that was where Touchstone was working. He went on for a long time explaining that, but it didn’t get much better, even when I listened to my recording of the session afterwards. It seemed then, and seems now, one of those classic instances of distinction without difference.
"In order to keep [Bradley Touchstone] involved," Campbell said, "Parsons has taken him on in a contractual relationship in order to maintain that creative process." Parsons Bridge and Tunnel, which had nothing to do with the current Peace Bridge project, hired Bradley Touchstone in order for the Peace Bridge project to maintain its relationship with Bradley Touchstone? What a rare and special bit of industrial altruism that would be, if that were indeed the case.
But it isn't the case, at least according to the February 2004 issue of McGraw-Hill Construction, which says that "Pasadena-based Parsons has appointed Bradley C. Touchstone as bridge architect/bridge aesthetics manager of its bridge and tunnel division. He will be based out of Parsons' Tallahassee, Fla., office. Touchstone will manage Parsons' bridge architectural and aesthetics activities for conventional and complex bridge projects worldwide."
If McGraw-Hill Construction has it right, then Bruce Campbell has it all wrong. Parsons wasn't engaging in corporate altruism by making it possible for Bradley Touchstone to stay involved with the Peace Bridge project. Rather, Bradley Touchstone is a new high-level employee of Parsons Bridge and Tunnel and he brought the Peace Bridge contract as a plum to his new employers.
Parsons is not new to this enterprise. They are the engineering firm that was going to produce the ugly and environmentally rapacious twin span that everybody this side of the border (except steel manufacturers, the PBA, the Buffalo-Niagara Partnership and the Buffalo News) loathed. In theory, Parsons has been totally out of this project since the PBA abandoned its twin-span plan four years ago. Now they're back in. Or, in Bruce Campbell's formulation, Bradley Touchstone is in, and Parsons goes where he goes, like a hunchback's hunch.
In this context, it is difficult not to think about the way the PBA last year turned down Cannon Design’s generous offer to submit a design proposal at its own expense. The three consultants hired by the PBA are being very well paid, primarily with US government funds. Paying for the design work itself was Cannon's way of atoning for asking to join the process later than those three firms. It seemed like a good deal. What could the harm be in having one of the country's top design firms take a look at this border crossing at no cost to the public? What's to lose?
The PBA rejected Cannon's request to participate and its offer to underwrite that participation because, the PBA said, the offer came in late and to let Cannon in late would be unfair to other firms that missed the deadline and wanted to come in late too. But there weren't any other firms in Cannon's position, no other major firms offering to spend several hundred thousand dollars of their own money on a longshot design proposal. Cannon is a national company with a great reputation in the field and strong area roots—its national HQ is in Grand Island—so it seemed at best mean-spirited not to give them a shot at the brass ring that was being offered to companies from other parts of the world.
That refusal to consider the Cannon proposal, I suspect, had nothing to do with the calendar. It was at least in part based on the PBA’s dislike of Bruno Freschi, whose curved-span design (worked out with the late bridge architect T.Y. Lin) is what got everybody excited about having a decent piece of public architecture here in the first place.
PBA officials all deny (publicly) that it had to do with personality, even in part. They wouldn’t make decisions of this magnitude based on personality, they say. But what is Bruce Campbell's description of the remarriage with Parsons to get Bradley Touchstone back into the project other than a description of a decision to dump one company and hire another based on personality? And if that's not the real reason for bringing Parsons in at this late date, what is? And, whatever the reason, why is it okay to bring Parsons in late with a paid ticket when it wasn't okay to let Cannon Design in at its own expense? For a lot of reasons, this stinks.
Copyright 2004 by Buffalo Report, Inc.