A Chicago-based concrete subcontractor has filed a $40-million federal lawsuit against Thornton Tomasetti, which is providing structural engineering and protective design services for the Obama Presidential Center project, alleging that racial discrimination caused project delays and cost overruns and put the subcontractor on the verge of bankruptcy.  

The subcontractor, II in One Concrete is part of the Concrete Collective, a joint venture on the project that also includes W.E. O’Neill Construction Co., and Trice Construction Co. 

II In One alleges that it was singled out due to racial discrimination and “subjected to baseless criticisms and defamatory and discriminatory accusations” by New York-based structural engineer Thornton Tomasetti.  

The lawsuit alleges that Thornton Tomasetti made an “improper and unanticipated decision” to impose new rules regarding rebar spacing and tolerance requirements, and required the subcontractor to undergo “excessively rigorous and unnecessary inspection,” which resulted in “extensive paperwork that impacted productivity and resulted in millions in losses.” 

“In a shocking and disheartening turn of events, the African-American owner of a local construction company finds himself and his company on the brink of forced closure because of racial discrimination by the structural engineer,” the lawsuit states.

Robert McGee, one of the owners of II In One Concrete, also alleges that Thornton Tomasetti submitted a letter to the owner, the Obama Foundation, falsely indicating that project delays and cost overruns were the result of “the underperformance and inexperience of the concrete subcontractor.”

In a memo attached to the lawsuit, Thornton Tomasetti states that other claims made by the general contractor, Lakeside Alliance, that the engineering firm “is somehow responsible for certain challenges encountered during the project’s concrete construction” are “factually incorrect and wholly meritless.”  

These allegations include the timeliness of Thornton Tomasetti’s responsiveness during construction administration, the quality of its structural drawings and specifications, the number of requests for information (RFIs) during construction, rebar congestion and splice requirements. 

“The construction issues were all unequivocally driven by the underperformance and inexperience of the concrete subcontractor,” Thornton Tomasetti’s memo states. 

Lakeside Alliance is made up of construction firms Brown & Momen, Power & Sons Construction, Safeway Construction and UJAMAA Construction and Turner Construction.  

The structural engineer calls corrective work needed on the project “extensive and wide-ranging.” Some of the items that Thornton Tomasetti says it had to review include damage to caisson dowels, removed mat pour due to curing heat issues, missed keyway in tower cores, exposed rebar, failure to install bars to approved shop drawings, pouring the garage entry ramp wall at the wrong thickness, and link beam bars not set at the correct elevation. 

“As you can see, this is an inordinate amount, and an experienced contractor would not have had this amount of problems,” the engineer’s memo states. 

According to the lawsuit, the damages that II in One has suffered include lost profits from this project and inability to obtain surety credit needed to bid on bonded projects, including public projects. The initial subcontract price of the II in One JV subcontract was $27 million.