Environmental monitoring correspondence regarding remediation contractor, March 2003

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

THACHER ASSOCIATES

Labor

Review of invoices revealed numerous issues pertaining to payroll. Due to the number of persormel employed on the project, the amount of corrections made to the payrolls and lack of a clear trail supporting said changes, only a sample time frame (from June 2, 2002, through June 30, 2002) was examined. TA’s review of the sample time frame revealed that the invoices lacked adequate support documentation. Retroactive payroll adjustments contain errors and lack a straightforward financial trail necessary to determine appropriate billing. The payroll issue becomes even more complicated considering that the backup documentation does not resolve the anomalies. Through TA’s review process of invoices submitted for analysis, as well as Safeway’s response to our inquiries TA was able to determine that the invoices lacked adequate support documentation. Other issues pertaining to payroll include lack of union benefits for some of the employees and billing for clerical services. TA is of the opinion that an in-depth study of payroll is warranted in order to reach sound conclusions. Some of our findings relative to payroll include the following;

a. Safeway double billed two (2) of its employees who performed work on both the asbestos abatemenVdemolition project and mold remediation project. This resulted in an overcharge of $612.03.

b. Safeway also appears to have made errors with regard to overtime rates charged to the project. Employee daily and/or weekly time invoiced to the project is billed at time and one half where no prior time during the billing cycle is reflected to justify the overtime rate. This issue raises a concern of Safeway billing time from other projects to the Ground Zero project.

c. Deductions for lunch breaks, which due to the 12-hour work shifts are billed at time and one half, have not been deducted. This resulted in an overcharge of $11,353.83

d. TA requested Safeway to “... provide a clear trail representing all payroll adjustments and/or corrections.” Safeway submitted an explanation that is inaccurate, demonstrating a failure to adequately research and accurately evaluate its in-house documents.

e. TA noted instances where Safeway employees were not paid initially due to the lack of daily logs or swipe card records. In these instances, corrections were made to the payroll records based solely on Bovis sign-in sheets. Conversely, TA noted that Bovis’s sign-in sheets also reflect Safeway employees who were not invoiced to the project.

f. Safeway made several corrections to its payroll records. Several of the payroll corrections resulted in other errors. Correction entries on employees

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