WASHINGTON: Here’s the story: The main builder of the massive new US Embassy in Baghdad “made so many design and construction errors” that the State Department is seeking to recover $132 million — about one-quarter of the value of the $470 million contract — to make necessary repairs, said the State Department’s inspector general, according to a report released Thursday.
The sprawling 21-bulding compound was originally budgeted to cost $600 million, but that price soon exploded to $736 million. The inspector general’s 58-page report, sent to Congress on Wednesday, is the first to confirm that problems persisted after the embassy was opened in April 2008.
In one finding, the report says that “safe areas,” used to protect staff in emergency situations, “were not constructed according to specifications.”
In another, it says that fire protection systems were improperly designed or installed, “thereby increasing the risk that the facilities and personnel would not be adequately protected.”
The audit, conducted with help from the Army Corps of Engineers, also uncovered substandard electrical wiring, cracking roadways and walkways, and an improper hookup between the embassy’s water supply and the Baghdad city water system and cited “construction deficiencies, incomplete and undocumented design work (and) additional charges attributable to inadequate quality control.”
First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting, the firm in charge of building the embassy compound, “also failed to conduct seismic bracing to protect fire lines in case of an earthquake (or earth-shattering bomb), did not perform any design calculations to support the construction of water and wastewater treatment plants, and did not properly install many exterior walls and concrete surfaces,” the report said.
The report blames many of the embassy buildings’ woes on a decision by the then-head of overseas construction at the State Department, retired Army Maj. Gen. Charles Williams, to set up a separate, secretive unit, answerable only to him, to oversee the project.
Williams retired under fire in December 2007. In comments appended to the report, Overseas Buildings Operations officials say that creating a standalone office was a mistake.
The inspector general’s report also suggests that the now-defunct office and its former head, who was a personal services contractor rather than a government employee, gave First Kuwaiti preferential treatment.
First Kuwaiti, by the way, has denied these accusations.
