Board Bridges Staffing in Engineer’s Office

CREST HAVEN – Is the county Engineering Office adequately staffed? That was the question freeholders sought to have answered at the April 23 caucus.
The subject arose after freeholders learned of change order No. 2 for $91,052 to the contract with WSP USA, Inc. for engineering services for Middle Thorofare Bridge railing replacement.
The resolution states “the change order is required to address additional bridge repairs necessary to complete rehabilitation work in a more cost effective manner.”
At the urging of Freeholder Director Gerald Thornton, the explanation was this change order addresses some items that were not originally planned for the initial contract, that’s the maintenance and protection of traffic.
That was done in the Engineering Office in the past, the board was told, but due to staffing, the work was shifted to the consultant.
“Has our internal staffing changed that much?” Thornton asked County Engineer Robert Church.
“Yes,” said Church. “We’re down two people right now, and we haven’t had an inspector for the past six months.”
“We have someone coming on board,” Church continued, “but we’ve been, for the past eight months, at least one person down.”
“Was the funding reduced so you couldn’t hire these people?” Thornton asked.
Church said it wasn’t.
“So, the money for the staffing is there?” asked Thornton.
“I don’t think it is actually,” Freeholder William Morey replied. Morey is liaison to the Engineering Office.
“I don’t remember that from the budget hearing,” said Thornton. “Did we reduce those?”
Nancy Mauro, director of the Engineering Office, explained that after former County Engineer Dale Foster retired, “they replaced Dale’s function, but not his budgeted position, so yes, the position is in the budget. Everybody that they had last year is in their budget this year.”
“So they haven’t reduced staff?” asked Thornton.
“Not this year,” Mauro said. Mauro was unsure if staff was reduced years ago.
Morey said that he asked Mauro for some history as to what was the office’s staffing, what it is now, and what the positions that need to be filled are.
“I know that we have apparently gone to more contracting of services which you have to have that balance,” said Morey. “It’s more expensive to contract than do internally, and sometimes it’s better to do one than the other.
“There’s been part-time staff members and alike, and realistically I think we know that there’s work that needs to be accelerated that really hasn’t been completed as quickly as we’d like. Whether that’s a result of reductions in staffing from 2008-09, I’m not really clear on that just yet, but it does need some study,” Morey continued.  
There are no dramatic changes needed, Morey added, but there’s some fine-tuning needed to certain positions, like the inspector position, whose duties may be covered some times of the year, but not others.
“We knew that as we got into the department and worked through the issues and got to understand the workload that was upon the department that we may have to step back and take a look at whether or not adjustments should be made,” said Morey.
Thornton circled back to the statement that the office didn’t have the personnel, yet funding for the personnel was included in the budget.
Using private contractors is more costly, stated Thornton. “The response that we got was it was because of lack of personnel. Lack of personnel wasn’t because accounting didn’t appropriate money.”
“I think it actually is, but it’s been that way for a few years,” Morey replied. “I think the inspector issue has been an issue for a bit of time.”
Thornton could not recall reducing staffing in the office.
The consensus in the room was that staffing was reduced about eight years ago, to which Thornton replied, “We got along fine eight years with present staffing we had with engineering and supplementing the bridge commission back and forth because they were working together, now suddenly, I’m hearing that they’re short staffed. That doesn’t make sense to me.”
“If we got along fine, I don’t know that the bridges would be in some of the shape that they’re in now,” Morey argued. “Ultimately, I think that department has worked really hard to try to keep services up, but the fact of the matter is I don’t think they’re able to do it from an internal basis. They’re not able to do it like they were many years ago. If we’re going to do it internally, we’ve got to have the inspector force.”
Thornton emphasized that he wanted to make sure the response of reduced staffing was accurate. He reiterated that private contractors are being hired, which is more costly than doing it in-house. Morey replied that’s been happening, which is why he asked Mauro to look into the history of the office.
“We need to take a look at this because when Bob (Church) says to me ‘Hey, we’re sending out office staff to go do inspection work in the field because we only have a part-time or seasonal inspector,’ that raises concern for me,” Morey said, “because then that goes right back into how do you cover it?”
Thornton pointed to the change order for more than $91,000, “that would more than cover the staffing, and this is only one project. What’s the cost on a lot of other projects if it’s because of the staffing?”
Church clarified that the more than $91,000 that was stated for “traffic control plans is probably $10,000 of that $91,000.” That amount mentioned is specialized work required by the consultants for additional work, according to Church.
Thornton ended the discussion by detailing Sarah Maloney, director of Human Resources and Training, to review previous engineering staffing and then provide her findings to him.
Freeholders approved the change order at the regular meeting, with Freeholder Marie Hayes absent.