TDOT Stops the First Millennium Bidding (December 14, 2010) in Light of Brooks' Letter and as Contractors Start Asking Questions

After Brooks' letter goes out, contractors contact TDOT and TDOT's Neil Hansen sends a letter to the City asking it to respond to the allegations in Brooks' letter.

The City recounted the history of the project. BIF provided a 2-page statement about Wild's estimating work. Wild's Knoxville attorney Woolf McClane presented arguments against the existence of a prohibited conflict of interest and referred to BIF's 2-page statement.

In a nutshell, BIF says that Wild had no advantage by virtue of its preparation of a Millennium cost estimate. And Wild was not paid for its work.

[Of course WBC didn't bill or get paid for their services. If BIF paid Wild then BIF would turn around and bill the City which would then just turn around and bill the Millennium Partners, including David & Tim Wild. Why bill for estimating services when you are going to end up paying yourself? Why not do it for free and keep a close relationship with the architect that you selected, that you pay, and that you had expected to work with as the project contractor.]

In the end, TDOT confirmed that there was a prohibited conflict of interest with WBC's participation in the bidding, and Wild was excluded as a bidder.

One interesting sidenote is that while all this controversy about conflicts of interest was taking place, a newspaper article written by Bob Moore on Dec. 12, 2010, states that Dan Brewer of Brewer, Ingram & Fuller (BIF) confirmed that his firm had "internal discussions" about Wild bidding but  Brewer would not state publicly if there was a consensus opinion or what that opinion was. 

My guess is that BIF knew there was a conflict of interest in Wild's bidding on a project where David and Tim Wild were also members of the MSP group that was owner, decision maker in design questions, and responsible for paying the architect.  The conflict wasn't just about "inside information" related to an estimate--although that was the conflict that finally got TDOT's attention.

Unfortunately, BIF got caught up in the Millennium web and couldn't/wouldn't bite the hand that was and still is feeding (paying) it. 

If contractors could see the conflicts--as noted in this article--then BIF certainly saw them.

BIF's knowledge of what was really going on in the handling of this project would probably be extremely enlightening if BIF could speak freely or was required to provide information and documents.