Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Replay Special Govt Audits And Oversight Committee 11416 20160115

Any other Public Comment . Seeing none Public Comment is now closed. Do you have any other questions . Id like to just wrap up. We just wanted to respond to the other two presentations and recommendation 4 which was the people soft system we appreciate the plan to develop the skills inventory capability of this system and the recommendation however of the civil grand jury was meant to allow Skill Development throughout any it employees not necessarily tied to the position current ly held by the employee and its a fast changing one and within the city and county of San Francisco so if the employee initiates on their own getting more training and stuff we want to have a way for them to have it logged into the people soft system. And also for the d h. R. Presentation, again, the civil grand jury appreciates the efforts in trying new faster methods for creating it eligibility lists and we hope the same methods can be used for other it positions and i also attended the coit meeting presentation and it created a lot of excitement among the departments and offices represented at the meeting. We only hope that these expectations can be fulfilled and d h. R. Has great plans and executing those plans will be hard work and wed like to see coit ask to see periodic updates at their meetings and potential future grand jurors that it warrants further investigation so thank you. Thank you very much for your work. And just as we wrap up this report again, i want to express my sincere appreciation to each and every member of the civil grand jury the time the effort the hours that you put into not only researching interviewing preparing these reports i know takes up a significant amount of your lives and so i just want you to know on behalf of the board of supervisors we truly appreciate this work and hope that some of the recommendations that have been made can be implemented so were a better more efficient city and were in the process i know of moving forward with making some of those recommendations and hopefully through legislation or other means were able to do that and thank you again and appreciate your work on the civil grand jury. Thank you very much well said. So im gonna make the recommendation. The recommendation for number 3. The recommendation number 3 has been implemented the department of Technology Sent a User Satisfaction survey to all clients and recommendation number 4 will not be implemented for reasons as follows the board of supervisors does not have authority to implement this recommendation and the board requests the department of technology and department of Human Resources to provide a report to the board with their progress by the end of the calendar year and then for recommendation number 5, it has been implemented. The department of Human Resources presented the results of its expedited hiring in october 2015 okay so i would like to have a motion to forward this item as recommended to the full board. So moved. Okay. Any objection . Seeing none then motion passes. Thank you very much once again. Madam clerk please call item number 4. The gas line breaks related to the citys construction on haight street and the California Public Utilities Commission and pg e. Okay at this time this is a hearing thats been called by supervisor breed so im turning it over to her. Thank you. Thank you colleagues and thank you everyone for being here today we have a lot of folks here and i know we have a lot of questions we want answered so ill be as quick as possible. Last year the city began a multimillion dollar Infrastructure Project to install water mains and replace sewers and ghilotti brothers won the main contract and the crews ruptured gas lines and we also experienced two sinkholes in the same area and five gas line breaks and two sinkholes and im so thankful and frankly surprised that no one was seriously hurt but ill tell you this the failures disruptived the Haight Ashbury community and the street was completely closed for hours at a time and stores were forced to close disrupting their business and the smell of leaking gas overpowered entire blocks and on one occasion someone told everyone to evacuate and on another occasion a foreman was dangled head first into a manhole and we have pictures which i think well show on the overhead projector if they are available on the laptop. Thank you. Some of this would almost be comical if it wasnt so dangerous and irresponsible the community and i have had enough. In september i asked the department of public works to suspend all work on the project and a few weeks later i had a press conference with leaders from the Haight Ashbury Merchants Association and the pan handle Neighborhood Association and many of those leaders are here today and thank you for being here and i look forward to hearing your presentations. Public works requested the prime contract ghilotti to remove the subcontractor synergy. Excuse me. Synergy appealed and it went to an administrative hearing before an independent hearing officer and ghilotti supported synergy and synergy blamed pg e and the hearing officers finally issued his decision on monday upholding our position that synergys safety violations are inexcusable and im happy to report synergy has been removed and public works are actively look for a new subcontractors but regardless, before any work resumes, the community and i have a lot of questions that need to be answered. What happened here . Why did these dangerous failures happen over and over again . Who is responsible for keeping track of where gas lines are and ensuring they are not hit and what is ghilotti and synergys Safety Record and how did they win these bids and with repeated past safety violations not able to continue working in our neighborhood and synergy came in one Million Dollars before other bidders and now were left holding the bag. Do we need legislative changes to move away from criteria that takes safety into consideration . What are the Lessons Learned and what else do we need to do to prevent Something Like this from ever happening again. I dont want to see any work resume in the haight street until we are sure our neighborhood can be safe and we deserve safety and accountability from our government and the companies that the government hires and companies that repeated ly jeopardize Public Safety should not be working on our streets and ive asked the San Francisco Public Utilities commission and pg e and ghilotti and synergy to be here today. I have a lot of specific questions for each entity and weve passed out copies of those questions near the microphone if anyone is interested. First id like to start hearing from the merchants and neighbors whose lives were impacted by the project. I want to start with the president of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council james ford. All right. Excuse me. Chairman yee and president breed and supervisor peski n. It was quite insulting by many residents and must be corrected before the projects continue. First off i want to thank the Merchant Association for being the eyes and ears on this project and i also want to thank pro sf and the other neighborhood groups that supported us on this matter and without their support its unlikely it would have received the attention we needed for this hearing to happen and thanks to president breed and calling this hearing. The total disregard for Public Safety and the local businesses on this project has been a disgrace and i think it should be noted that the gentleman who spoke earlier on topic 2 i think highlights why were here today. It seems that theres not enough oversight on much of these matters and as you can see here theres 3 sinkholes by some of the residents calculations and the infrastructure is aging and should be replace d in a responsible manner. Some are old and some are sealed off and the knowledge of what lines are live and where they are located is seriously lacking and i know if i had done this on my personal residence it would not have passed inspection. I have six items and the dates that we calculated gas lines and i recognize number 2 wasnt related to the project but many of us in the neighborhood felt it was similar and i have kind of our initial reactions as to what happened. On baker street thats cool it wasnt on haight and august they did it again and september darn thats not good. Coming into october maybe we should get something going and by october 8th it was lets shut this down this is not acceptable. Now, we do while it is nice to hear that synergy has been fired we feel this is something thats beyond just the subcontractor errors and they were used as partially a scapegoat. Wed like to know the following if i can get the next slide going here excuse me. There we go. What happened . A summary of what actually excuse me here. A summary of what happened. We have no statement early on and no statement has been made by the director of dpw and is it unusual for there to be repeated failures of the same type in the same project in such a short period of time . Does this happen all the time during these projects . Did either have a history of such errors on the job done in the past much like synergy and if so, why were they hired and what are the responsibilities of pg e to convey information on gas lines and who in the city coordinated with pg e and we ask a couple of questions what is to be done. What were the Lessons Learned from this gross failure and how are they to be applied to future projects and what procedures are to be changed in the contracting and construction process and breed we know you are working on that and appreciate that. What procedures with pg e are to be improved and when will the neighborhood groups receive an official letter explaining what happened and why and this would demonstrate accountability thats been lacking in our eyes and with the attitude of moving forward at all costs often leaves many of us behind. The residents of San Francisco deserve better we used to be the city that knows how and i believe weve become the city that moves forward with no regard to its current residents and thank you for your time and i appreciate the hearing. Thank you for your presentation and now we will have the Haight Ashbury Merchants Association representative come up and present. Supervisor peskin supervisor yee and president breed thank you for holding this hearing and the Haight Ashbury neighborhood commercial corridor is de marked here in this map. The Haight Ashbury merchants representation represents over a hundred merchants and they all occurred on one block of the commercial corridor which is indicated with the smaller box. The construction was started in april 2015 and was halted in october 2015. Originally the timeline that we had been given was two weeks. Whether it was two weeks or four weeks whatever it was supposed to be, it clearly went into months following delays after each gas leak required a halt to the work investigations all of this created extreem disruption. The city needs to take a look at what absolutely needs improvement before we continue and the project im actually going to start referring to it as the muni forward project making extensive changes to haight street and covers the entire corridor of the Haight Ashbury commercial corridor and will impact not just 30 merchants but impact over 140 merchants and for us to get this right is so necessary. Theres a high level of anxiety among the merchants about the Economic Impact and that they not be disastrous to their business. We felt we were getting good communication and transparency and awareness around the scope of the work that would be done. There were notices provided and meetings held and articles that detailed the work that was coming. However, once the projects started, only 2days only 2 days after the work started was when the first gas leak occurred and it was chaos. It was shelter in place and evacuate and there was no clear understanding about who needed to respond. We found out later it was going to be pg e responding and pg e had to do its investigation and there was complete disruption to that block beyond just parking restrictions and Traffic Controls. It was completely shut down and the businesses were shut down that day. We requested a meeting with the city project managers dpw as well as the contractors and before we even had a chance to sit down and meet with them, a week later there was a gigantic sinkhole which opened up in the intersection of haight and masonic that seemed to be related to the work being done. The project stopped and started through the next several months and we experienced in total on this one block five gas leaks. Believe it or not there was improved response to each gas leak in the amount of time that each business was closed reduced because they started to prepare anticipating future gas leaks and there were additionally another sinkhole which opened up on october 22 and james pointed out there was another sinkhole blocked further down on 1600 block of haight street and again this work is not complete and weve completely lost confidence that it will be done in an effective way. Im gonna focus on what im talking about specifically to the merchants concerns and obviously real residents concerns and most of those buildings are multiuse and businesses on the first floor and residents and neighbors that are above they have legitimate concerns as well but specifically speaking on behalf of the merchants, its key that you understand business closures and disruption that may last 2 or 3 or 4 weeks usually can be suffered by a business but once we get into months that can sometimes be catastrophic for a business and a business doesnt have in their business agreement any rent relief for disruption to their business and you can sometimes reduce Staffing Levels to try to weather financial downturns but extended periods of disruption this creates an extreme amount of disruption. One of the businesses had an extreme sewer backup that resulted from this work and its not like somebody is coming up from the contract or or from the city or helping them fix what they need to get fixed. Theres absolutely no assistance in these situations for the businesses that are being the most impacted. Some businesses have reported loss of revenue up to 20 percent and even up to fifty percent. So to conclude, here are the summary ideas that this merchants idea has come up with for what the city needs to do to earn back our trust before we move forward with the construction work. There has to be some level of accountability here. There were systematic breakdowns at many steps along the way. The timeline accountability and the schedule slipping from weeks to months and the work still not being completed i hate to say for to go out for a year for one block is completely unacceptable and building in timeline accountability so that the businesses and communities being impacted i feel should be built into the project scope of these projects. Additionally, we called for meetings and asked for people to help answer questions about what was happening and who was in charge. We got a lot of finger pointing and not a lot of anyone standing up and saying this is whats happening. There was blame places on pg e for their lack of updated maps and concerns about ghilotti brothers the prime contractor not providing sufficient oversight and concern that the subcontractor was being callous and using heavy mechanized equipment to rupture gas lines one after the other and it became comical it was just ridiculous. Finally i have to say that the city obviously had a role here. The city hired this contractor and subcontractor and unclear to us that the city explained to us why their hands why tied to not fix what was happening. Was it the inability of the city because of the contract or an unwillingness of the people that had the legal ability to stop the work and were they just unwilling and why . In the future, especially since we have this significant project thats coming forward with the muni forward project which is currently scheduled to start in 2017 which makes no sense to me because its the Fiftieth Anniversary of the summer of love and why would we disrupt during this historic moment. There has to be at a minimum basic city approach to mitigating Business Impacts for this neighborhood commercial corridor. At a minimum there should be on all projects around the city open for business signage travelling from project to project that basically gives people the message that these businesses even though theres lots of cones and things dug up that the businesses are open and thats a basic thing that can be done for any project whether short or long one. If a project is expected to last 3 to 6 months, i would look for the city to earmark specific dollars for neighborhood promotion or improvements to help mitigate some of the Financial Impact being made as a result of this future case a transit related project. If the project is expected to last more than 6 months, i would like the city to actually start considering adding a Business Interruption assistance fund. Ive read about other cities doing this and la has done this and a couple of other cities and when theres a big project like a light rail project or the San Francisco muni forward project is an example, you can expect 6 months or more disruption will have such a catastrophic impact on mom and pop businesses and you need to plan for that otherwise you are simply saying to us tough luck and you have to put up with Everything Else that were asking you to accomplish and the Business Owner doesnt have that many levers that they can place to really stay healthy and alive in that circumstance. To earn back our Community Trust we would ask that there be a speedy conclusion to the current project and that we really consider setting aside and postponing any work scheduled to start in 2017. That project has been called the public realm plan but its a muni Improvement Plan including pedestrian scale streetlighting and i dont want to see anymore construction work and im not alone in this and we have support from the Neighborhood Council and Improvement Association and these are neighborhood groups that dont always agree on things but they agree on this. They want to see the pedestrian scale lighting and they want to see the things that the Community Asked for before we create significant disruption to this community again. Thank you very much. Thank you. Supervisor yee . Yeah, i just want to make a comment. The disruption that these City Projects have on businesses is something that im keenly aware of and were facing some similar issues out in my district and ive already started some discussion about the notion of can we set aside some funds and how do you allocate it and so forth when it comes to especially when its a long time of disruption i mean theres nobody in their right mind would think that a business can sustain months and months of not having access to your customers so i really appreciate and hopefully my office will work with president breeds office to come up with something. Thank you. Thank you supervisor yee. Definitely its something thats a serious concern to me and whats happening with construction all over the city and sadly how it is impacting especially our Small Businesses in the neighborhoods and with that i want to bring up the department of public works john thomas the Division Manager of project management and construction. I have a laundry list of questions for you mr. Thomas and i definitely want to make sure that not only you get to your presentation but were able to allow some of the other departments that we have here to present as well. Just to let members of the public who are here know we all know this is a really important issue and its not as easy as a quick hearing. This is gonna definitely take us sometime because we do have to answer all of these questions in order to make sure that when were allowing work to happen as miss evans has stated, that the Community Trusts the people who are in the Community Working and doing the kind of thing that ensures us that this is not going to happen again and i definitely want to make sure that we get all of our questions answered and im sure you heard from folks who are in the neighborhood a lot of upset people because there was a lot of uncertainty and there was the response and the communication from the department was problematic and im just hopeful that your presentation can help address some of those issues and so with that mr. Thomas. Thank you president breed and chair yee and supervisor peskin john thomas for project management and construction and id first like to say as im sure you are aware that safety is our departments number 1 priority and we were extremely distressed throughout this project as the issues unfolded and as you know the hearing was held in december and in that hearing they went through each one of those incidents that supported our contention that the subcontract ors should be removed from the project and i can go through those in detail and both of the previous presenters went through most of them already and ill move through them as rapidly as possible in order to entertain any questions you might have and i think one of your questions was also what is our process for selecting a contractor and we work through the administrative code and it stipulates we hire the low bid contractor and depending on the economy well see anywhere from 1 to 5 bidders on a project and requires that they have the appropriate insurance and bonding to proceed with the work and with that in mind this project was advertised in december and notice to proceed was granted for start of work on april 27th as was mentioned just 2days later we had our first gas line break. There was well get to this in a later slide and 911 was called and there was response from pg e and the Fire Department as well as the Police Department at that time and mistakes were made by the contractor that caused that to be more difficult and time consuming and subsequent to that we had various issues here and a meeting within a few weeks with the haight community and we had come upon unsafe shoring and there were also weekly meetings with the contractor and our resident engineer and inspectors met on a weekly basis with the contractor to go over issues scope and schedule any changes or change orders that might be coming to light as a result of progress of the work and obviously the issue of the first gas line break was paramount in those meetings and discussions. Again, moving forward into july we had a potential injury because of blocked sidewalks from a forklift that we had notified synergy of and the photo you showed earlier all of these things raises concerns and letters were issued to the contractor and to ghilotti who the contract was with and each contractor solicits bids from subcontractors to perform various specialty work within the contracts and so a certain percentage of the work needs to be performed depending on the type and complexity of the work. So all of that comes into play as the general contractor puts their bid together in this case ghilotti selected synergy as their main subcontractor who had over fifty percent of the work responsibility on the project and that was with all of the underground work and they were doing water and sewer work on the contract. So again, moving on july 27th we had another pedestrian injury tripping and we had warned them of potential injuries a week before that and other safety issues noticed and another month goes by before the second gas line break and all happening within that same block and we have a Second Community meeting and escalated concerns that this has happened a second time and we had informed the contractor that we were concerned with the oversight that was happening and made repeated requests at this point now to provide an onsite safety inspector to be present at that time and 2 and a half weeks later we have our third gas breaks just a couple of doors away and again another deep trench without proper shoring and at that stage issued a stop work order and work was stopped until the contractor could come back to us with their procedures on how they were going to make sure this didnt continue to occur moving forward and we had the contractor come out for emergency work that needed to occur and we had another meeting with pg e ghilotti and synergy on september 22 and after they have addressed work resumed on september 28th monday. On october 6th the tuesday we have our 4th gas main break and another deep concern that a member of the public was after this gas line break is repaired we note that synergy has not been properly shored that trench and before they responded to our deficiency notice the trench collapsed and broke a 4th, fifth time and at that point we had another meeting with the director who concurred that the project should be shut down and meetings with the City Attorneys Office and sent the letters to both ghilotti and synergy to direct synergys removal on the contract and synergy appealed that and we went through an administrative hearing which for various legal reasons didnt happen as quickly as we would like and delayed until december 9th and we just recently as of this week received the final report from the hearing officer supporting our contention to remove the contractor. Just a quick question theres been a lot of finger pointing in this whole process and based on the information you have based on the conclusion that youve drawn to remove synergy do you believe that synergy specifically was at fault here or were there other agencies that played a role in where we are now . I do believe that the fault lies with the contractor. The contractor has the ultimate responsibility when excavating in the public right of way to use 811 to contact u. S. A. And have the utilities come out and mark their infrastructure and the contractor knows approximately where it is and what they need to do in that area and the obligation of the contractor is to hand dig and i know we have representatives from pg e here that can go into more detail but it needs to be exposed before you can utilize heavy equipment and so that is certainly my conclusion. Okay. So again moving on, the proper procedures for a gas break include immediately stopping the work, calling 911 and pg e and dont touch the damaged line and both Fire Department and Police Department take action as they see fit and pg e to come in and turn off the line and perform a repair and the public works and our contractor to follow the instructions of the Fire Department and pg e. Obviously our public works inspectors are to notify management and Public Affairs and the contractor assists in evacuation and securing the site. For a water break were to contact the Water Department and any other agencies asneeded and if its a Small Service we can clamp that service to minimize the water losses at that point and notify Public Affairs and the Water Department will notify the residents and businesses and the Water Department will come in and turn off the line and again, perform the repair. Why did they failures happen over and over again . You were reading my mind i was just thinking that. Well, im following your script here for the questions you had set out for us but it is our opinion that the contractor did not follow the appropriate safety procedures in each of those incidents and its certainly unusual to have this many incidents happen in so short a period of time and so close together and ive been with the city now for nearly 30 years and i cannot recall a single incident where weve had more than one occur in a zone like this and it was quite a surprise as this was unfolding and you know we were consistently and constantly trying to work with the contractor to bolster up their process and procedure and to be sure it was done in a safe manner but those efforts certainly did not bear enough fruit as we move forward. Who was responsible for keeping track of where gas lines and ensuring that they are not hit . Pg e has the responsibility for tracking all of their facilities and again we have members of pg e that can discuss that in more detail and they provided their drawings to the contractors as well as to our design er and that was all provided to the contractor and the contractor is responsible to be in compliance and the contractor is responsible to follow the guidelines set by state and city for working around utilities and again thats our contention that that was not adhered to during the process of the work. Did ghilotti and synergy have a history of previous errors and no, we were not aware of any project really that had had this type of failures and this frequency of failures during its duration and this was not expected by any stretch and i think synergy has made it clear they have done many many projects with the city over the years and this is not a regular occurrence for them either. Who is going to complete the haight Street Project . So the process that we discussed earlier with the hearing, the administrative hearing, was to remove the subcontractor. Our contract with ghilotti brothers remains in place and its our intend to continue with that contract and weve asked ghilotti to substitute for synergy and perform the work with a new subcontractor which they are currently attempting to do and they have identified 2 subs one to perform the water work and one to perform the sewer work and working with them now on providing all the documentation necessary to be added into the contract and begin the submittal process on restarting the work on haight street. So with regard to what are Lessons Learned, i think there are a number of Lessons Learned here for us and certainly while our procedures work most of the time they arent fail safe and i know thats not necessarily what we want to hear but were looking at various options including considering establishing thresholds within the contract and the potential for monetary fines but i think the overarching approach to this is to increase our Quality Assurance and oversight on the contractor and were going to work with pg e and the contractor to make sure that the city is aware of any instructions that are given from pg e about their subsurface infrastructure so we can certainly keep our eye out as well but it will be closer coordination will help us get through this. So i think the other question that you asked Going Forward is are there any legislative changes that could be made and i was going to defer to nicholas to speak of the efforts currently underway with the city to look at past performance on contractors in order to add that to the evaluation in addition to the process and i think that could go a long way towards making a difference in situations like this. So that concludes my presentation on the questions that you had submitted. Do you want to have nicholas speak to the legislative issues that were looking at now . We could talk about that. Ill bring you back to talk about it once we have allowed some of the other presentations to occur because its definitely a discussion that i want to have but i want to take this opportunity to probably go a little bit out of order and bring pg e up to talk about, to present on this particular issue and then get back to our timeline. I know we have john higgins who is the Vice President of gas disruption operations here and from government relations. Thank you for coming and joining us here today. President breed thank you very much for the violation to speak to you today and respond to any issues you have. Supervisor yee and supervisor peskin, much appreciated. We share your concern for the safety issues. Public safety is a primary concern of pg e. It is a worry for us every day. We work hard at improving it and one of the reasons i joined pg e 3 and a half years ago and ive been in the gas operations business my entire 28 year career and damage prevention programs at 4 other utilities across the nation. Its something that i eat sleep live and breath every day so i appreciate your efforts here to improve Public Safety in this particular neighborhood. I want to ensure you, though, that Public Safety in the city of San Francisco in totality is our concern. We went back and looked at the number of dig ins to our gas and electric infrastructure and weve actually seen a 20 percent reduction in dig ins between 2014 and 2015 despite the fact that weve seen a Record Number of requests to mark our facilities we received over 25 thousand requests from excavators to mark our facilities so the incidents that occurred in the haight are unusual and we do not commonly see this occurring so this is of great concern to us. I would like to talk about some of the positive steps that pg e has taken to drive that 20 percent reduction. First and foremost Close Partnership with the Cities Department of public works and the citys Fire Department represented here by deputy chief gonzales are critical and help us all get better. Id also like to point out a couple of changes weve made here to improve the damage prevention process and lets start with ourselves and we have what we believe is a worldclass team men and women that work for pg e here in the city every day out of our harrison Street Office are highly trained and we also have a Quality Assurance program to check on them to ensure they are accurate and further, weve equipped them all with stateoftheart Geographic Information in their vehicle so they have a gis map terminal in their vehicle so that they can see where our facilities are located across the city including Historical Records that they can reference at hand. However, we dont primarily rely on maps we have High Technology thats given to each of these men and women and they are trained to use it effectively and the preference is to directly connect to our gas assets and trace them out and secondarily well locate our facilities and the maps are a tertiary means of locating a facility and when folks say pg e may not know where all of the facilities are, ive reviewed all of these five incidents and these facilities were properly marked as mr. Thomas pointed out government code 4216 is clear requiring any excavation to locate before beginning any work and locate those facilities and many times unfortunately dont call 811 and even when they do they do not exercise proper care around infrastructure. Can we talk about that just for a minute in detail . Because im not sure if you have received the letter that we just got from synergy explaining just what the problem was because you know and i know there were finger pointing going on and pg e thought these gas lines werent properly marked and you are telling us we know exactly where they are and we know how to communicate this information to the folks that request it and we have hotlines to discuss this with people and in particular did you have a chance to take a look at the letter . I mean i just got the letter. I like you just had an opportunity to skim it briefly. Okay and you saw the part where it says pg e gas lines you saw that part correct . Can you explain what they are trying to say and what is actually the case based on what you know about this particular area . Sure. I reviewed the five incidents with our damage prevention supervisors that provide services here to the city of San Francisco and its clear to me that the facilities were properly marked in all incidents and government code is clear 811 must be called and the facilities must be marked and then the excavator must use due care when working around the facilities and thats two key components. First, when excavating within 24 inches you are required to hand dig and only then use mechanized means and we often find facilities crossed and the excavator is obligated to support and protect those facilities once they are exposed and we certainly have responsibility in the process but the excavator also has the responsibility to provide due care once they are exposed does that help . Yes. They can tell us a little bit more about the requirements in terms of this situation so thank you for clarifying that. Gladly. So we believe were making progress on the damage prevention front but this haight incident series of incidents is certainly troubling to us and we applaud your support of efforts to reduce gas electric and other infrastructure damage anywhere across San Francisco. Is there anything that you believe that pg e could have done to help prevent this from happening or continuing to happen . Were there any additional steps that you might have missed that could have contributed to making sure that this was not happening . I mean im sure when you first heard about the initial gas leak, that was definitely alarming and then to hear about additional gas leaks, it would seem that you would basically pg e would definitely want to be actively engaged and right there at the forefront of making sure that theres a company out there thats doing what they are supposed to do so that they are not disturbing gas lines and putting the public in danger in this way. President breed hindsight is 2020. Had we known then what we know now we could have possibly spent more time there but as time wore on we were there almost on a daily basis checking on that project to reduce the potential for further damages and its incumbent upon an excavator once they are exposed and thats a great challenge and i mentioned earlier that we conducted 25 thousand plus marks across the city and 2000 a month and lots of activity going on in the city of San Francisco and a lot of it is great Infrastructure Improvement but doesnt necessarily allow us to stand by on every excavation for the full extent but were there for support and to provide personnel to stop by and visit and ensure that everyone understand exactly what they are digging around. Were always available with that kind of response when necessary. Id also like to talk a little bit if i may around Emergency Response. Pg e and their Emergency Response activities fall under my area of responsibility were proud that we provide one of the best Emergency Response times in the nation. We are in the top in terms of from the time we receive a call to the time were onsite is right around 20 minutes on average and in the Natural Gas Industry is quite impressive and so we appreciate the opportunity to participate here today and ill answer any other questions you have and were looking to be strong partners with you as the work continues in the haight area. Thank you very much thank you for being here today. Gladly thank you. With that id like to now go to the San Francisco Fire Department. I know deputy chief gonzales is here from the department and i know you have received our one question very simple i mean what the Fire Department Response Team when something happens and people call 911 can you explain just what the departments role is in a situation like this and how the department reacts and what are the measures that you take in order to ensure Public Safety when this first occurs . Absolutely president breed. I just drew up a brief synopsis and we definitely make sure pg e is also on route and has been notified and if we can we establish a command post in a safe area but also a unified command post with the San Francisco Police Department and based on the size of the leak if we have to evacuate buildings well jointly evacuate buildings nearest the leak and it just might be leaking where they hit it and underground leakage and go into the buildings with our cgis to make sure its not leaking inside the buildings as well and definitely secure a perimeter and pedestrian Traffic Control as well and we have our engines safely secure water supply from a safe area and stand by in case a fire did occur and if the leak was outside and burning we would let it burn but protect exposures with the hose lines and wait for pg e to mitigate and we do rely on their response even on our basic structure fires to shut off utilities and they do a good job in those incidents. Safety of the pedestrians and Traffic Control. Wed assist and have water pumps and thats basically the synopsis i have and if you have any other questions im happy to answer. Thank you. Thank you for being here today. I now want to invite up the San Francisco Public Utilities commission to present on behalf of the commission and i know again most of the departments were given the questions in advance and we want to make sure that each departments response based on what their responsibility is as it relates to this particular situation so thank you for being here. Thank you for having me president breed. Im glad to be here to answer these questions. I am the assistant general manager in charge of sewer and wastewater. Do you want to discuss the sinkholes that occurred on haight street. We had actually 3 and only one was on the project area between masonic and ashbury and that happened we went out to flush a lateral because we got a complaint from a resident and discovered it was collapsed and the work was going on right there the construction was going on there and we asked the contractor this is your responsibility as the contractor to fix it. He completed the work on november 20th. So for clarity the sinkhole was as a result of the work that was being done . Yes. So for certain . That was our finding and our supervisor went out and told the contractor it was obviously part of your work. Thank you. I just want to make sure thats clear because there have been mixed signals as to who was responsible that this was related to the work it just wasnt certain so i just want to make sure that its made clear that the sinkhole was in direct relation to the actual work that was going on so thank you for that. Okay. The other two were outside of the project area. The next one was on haight also between masonic and clay ton and that was a void underneath the street that happened on the 21 st and mobilized immediately and had our own sewer repair contractor on site j. Flores and they had that repaired by the next day. And it had nothing to do with the work . No not outside the project area and a collapsed manhole and we just were going back to fix and repair on january 20th. And did that one have anything to do with the work . No, that was also outside. We had one on each block. The other two were on 15 hundred and 16 hundred block. Okay. And your second question. We obviously dont like the contracts we have attorneys that do that. The administrative code is what we go by. We do work very closely together and any work underneath the street dpw is obviously in charge of what happens above the street but like the rest of the utilities we try to coordinate our efforts wherever we have any work to be done for example right now going through a major paving bond for dpw and we still need to make sure which ones are as there is a significant coordinated effort between the underground utilities. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Okay and now id like to ask Kenneth Bruno from California Public Utilities Commission to join us and the Program Manager for gas safety and Reliability Branch thank you for being here today. Thank you president breed and fellow supervisors so thank you for the introduction i am ken bruno Safety Enforcement Division and i have a team of approximately 34 specialists and Pipeline Safety inspectors and Civil Engineers and electrical engineers and general inspectors and were responsible for over 100, 000 miles of transition pipelines and our jurisdiction is really on the infrastructure and we dont oversee you know sewer projects and stuff like that. That said, its very important that the regulated entity in this case pg e have good damage prevention efforts and you know conduct outreach and is clear with sort of following their part of government code 4216. The other thing i want to say is that of these incidents the only one that the California Public Utilities Commission investigated is the one on july 29th and wed be happy to provide the report. I cant speak on findings if you would like on that first incident but on the other incidents we did not conduct investigations because it did not meet reporting criteria if you would like. Can you talk about the findings of the report . Sure. The april 2015 report concluded that the third party failed to hand dig to expose underground facilities in other words the 811 call was made the operator went out and located and marked the facilities and the engineer concluded that based on field evidence that the pipeline, the gas pipeline was not daylighted or is shown by hand digging using the Power Equipment and in other words power tools were used and the pipe got hit and we did not find pg e with any in that case and the other thing i will say the team that i lead were responsible for Design Construction and operations for the Gas Pipelines and a lot of our work is making sure that the lines are originally constructed to specifications and they are actually built and operated and maintained and again, just for terminology the lines here, our distribution lines lines that typically operate at lower pressures and deliver gas to the merchants and to the residents and larger transition lines move gas throughout the state and operate at much higher pressures so we do conduct also special inspections on the construction of those lines themselves and hope three that addresses sort of our regulatory our role i know there is a question about our lines mapped in San Francisco or haight specifically the investigation on april 2015 did not find any issues with maps being a contributing factor or a route cause of the failure but i think its important to note that you start with maps and then you can do other methods you know indepth or direct the maps in this case were actually accurate . Well, the final report does not have a finding that mapping accuracies or inaccuracies contributed to the failure in other words even absence maps we found the lines were probably marked but the probable route cause was that the excavator did not hand dig by hand digging you, you are not using a mechanical tool. You can essentially verify the operators marks heres the mark and yes the line is right there and now were comfortable to use Power Equipment and take proper measures. Can i ask some questions about the California Public utilities role and yes, while i appreciate the investigation and the findings its clear that there was a major mistake made by the subcontractor which i know was not your direct responsibility but does the california puc have a responsibility to make sure that when you have for example a contractor, subcontractor or anyone doing work that causes such a situation as a gas line are you posirupture, isnt there something from a state level that can be done to help stop this from occurring and not just the local city you know like we have our process it happened again and it happened again but isnt there some state regulatory thing that should have happened in this case to stop the contractor from continuing to work . I would say safe excavation is a 3 legged stool including local governments including San Francisco and also the public so i did mention we have over a hundred thousand miles of distribution pipelines and you know we had one incident on april 29th and just to be clear reporting criteria for the department of transportation involves a release of gas, fifty thousand dollars or more in Property Damage or significant in the eye of the operator and the California Public Utilities Commission has put in a major media requirement on that and the first incident prompted abc 7 to come out is my understanding and the other ones we could only find more of a local almost the point is we didnt know about the other ones. So whose responsibility would it have been to report the other ones . They did not meet reporting criteria either at the federal level or at the California Public Utilities Commission level. Had they been reported they would have been investigated. How should they have been reported . They should not have. We looked into the other incidents and concluded that the one that should have been reported was reported and to answer your question about what role we have i think its different if were talking about the first incident or the second or third or 4th and in my opinion and this is my opinion, i certainly am not speaking about laws right now but the operator knew about all of these so the second incident hey its the second one in 2 months when that hits you start having conversations like all right maybe theres an issue here with communication and the key here is for the excavator and operator have an open dialogue and not start pointing blame because you want to make sure that the gas stays on the inside of the pipeline and luckily there was no ignition here or explosion and i think thats a huge issue to consider in your contracts but its about Public Safety too people dont go home at night when gas ignites and trust me ive been there when that happens and a prudent thing for an operator to do is to actually post a person there. Again, not written in the guidelines or laws but i think it would be a prudent practice to have somebody on stand by 247 for the duration of that project and just my own opinion but as far as what the puc can do we do what we can and weve supported operators that have identified problem Third Party Contractors in other words frequent offenders and we have supported legislation in the form of injunctions and recently a judge in bakers field people need to follow the law and if it we know someone is not following the law yes we have a role and is it codified somewhere, no. The other thing ill say about mapping is that the California Public Utilities Commission has an active proceeding right now into pg es Record Keeping and their mapping and their mapping on Distribution Systems so i really cant comment outside of the proceeding more in detail but the investigation is has a number i 14 l 008 and its an active proceeding. I think we hit the operator procedures. One second. Supervisor peskin . Youre saying you dont know if thats codified . Can you repeat your question. You are talking about this case in San Bernardino whatever but you dont know whether these issues are codified. I did not say that supervisor what i said was a best practice or a prudent practice is not codified in other words im sure in my opinion if you go out to repair 2, 3, 4 gas leaks something starts happening when you see a pattern develop i would say its a best practice and best practices are not you know legislative mandates they are sort of good Safety Management is what they are. I think its the Lessons Learned i think its as a National Leader in pipeline industry or at least the aspiration to be one thats where you set the bar and where you achieve so there is room to be that in the opinion of the cpuc and again, im not trying to push back to San Francisco about the 3 legged stool but its true its the regulators including city governments and the excavators and this is certainly nationally its recognized that thats what it takes and by the way nationally, this is our number 1 cause for pipelines damage to pipelines and while i am hopeful it will never happen here again the statistics show that it happens all too frequently. I think what my biggest concern here is you know i feel that the city failed because we should have done something more to stop this before there were five gas leaks there was clearly a problem after one and two and if this is not common which has been said by the department of public works and we had continued to allow this subcontractor to work, that is a serious concern to me and in my mind what im thinking is that a Higher Authority like the state or the federal government should have the ability to intervene and to basically based on you know, the regulations that exist stop a project and look at what is going wrong and how its impacting Public Safety similar to the investigation but more importantly there was a lot of concern because this continued to happen a lot of concern a lot of frustration. Its definitely primarily about Public Safety and the uncertainty of whats really going on and whos taking charge and whos responsible and who is stopping it and who is regulating and theres still a lot of un certainly here for me because again i think there was just a lot that happened to get us to a point where we finally shut it down i mean i, as the elected representative from the district there should have been something in place to shut it down before it would even get to that point and thats why im looking to the california state puc for that role and guidance based on your understanding of the laws and the way they work and the accountability to our Utilities Companies and contractors and people who deal with this all over the state of california and i guess im looking for a little bit more that would make me feel comfortable because yes weve established the subcontractor was at fault and has been fired but what happens in the future with any other subcontractors or anyone else who is in a very similar situation and this continues to occur. It shouldnt have to come from an elected official to shut something down there should be procedures in place thats what im looking for. So were talking about a sewer replacement project here not a Gas Construction project and theres a difference i know its related but what happens is really i dont speak right now for the whole puc what im saying is in these incidents these were not gas projects these were. I do understand that but i think the problem is that there were gas leaks. There were gas hits there was third party excavation damage that caused pipes that were holding gas to not hold gas so that said, had i received a phone call that there was something going on out here we did not know. We knew about the first one. I didnt get involved with the second, third and 4th until recently. And i think thats where the disconnect is theres no trigger. Theres a reporting criteria and that is again it is who is responsible for the reporting criteria to the california puc. Pg e the operator. Okay so they did on one occasion . We feel they met reporting criteria im sorry if i wasnt clear, earlier. It is a release of gas you were clear but i just wanted to understand who was responsible for that reporting criteria. The operator is and you know certainly if we find a reportable incident thats not reported we have Enforcement Authority to levy on the operator so there is strict reported criteria the media component is the one here that triggered the investigation because abc 7 was onsite and the other incidents august 27th september 16th and october 6th did not trigger because there was no major media presence. But you were aware of them and you looked at no thats not accurate i was not aware of them until recently. Okay thank you. Supervisor peskin . This is more for mr. King or thomas whenever its appropriate. When Something Like this where you are looking for the cpuc to step up absent reporting criteria pickup the phone call us and well conduct a special investigation i wish i would have known and were certainly not saying we wont do that we will. I get a lot of calls i get whistleblowers and do a lot of investigations that are not codified in the statutes. So for example, what we could do i think from a local legislative level is to require that when a situation occurs where theres any gas leak, that our department of public works or any of our contractors who excuse me any of our departments who contract to do work that impacts lines that could possibly touch and create a problem with any gas line were required to contact the cpuc in order to investigate each of those incidents thats a possibility . Im not sure i understood your full statement but yes if you contact us well definitely take a look at whats going on in the city of San Francisco. Okay thank you very much. Youre welcome president breed. Supervisor yee . First you said it did not meet the reporting requirements but you wish you had known about it and you would have come out to look at it so given that, what does it take, would it have made any difference if the reporting requirements would have covered these other incidents . You would have had final reports from the other incidents. I would have sent an inspector out there and find out what happened and we do that hundreds of times a year for the state. There was a reporting requirement and you looked at it right away i guess and could you could we change or could the state change the reporting requirements so it would have covered these other ones that didnt seem to be meeting the current requirements . The state often has a lot of interest in damage prevention and the California Public Utilities Commission is a strong advocate and its very important to make sure you get the resources to go along with any changes in laws but i think were going to have updates on legislation. Okay. I get we need more resources but is it possible to change it . I would say anything is possible, sir. All right. Thank you. Youre welcome. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for having me i appreciate it. Okay with that i want to bring dpw back up just to kind of follow up on the issue around competitive bid. Mr. Thomas, did you want to talk a little bit about that or do you want to have mr. King talk about it or . I think id like to have mr. King talk about the efforts that are underway. I think this issue came up before i mean its mostly because i brought it up time and time again ive had challenges even before i was a member of the board when i was a director of the africanamerican culture complex and we were required to accept the low bid and the quality of the work was really problematic and it was a really frustrating process and so one of the things that im most concerned about is our requirement to accept a low bid but in this particular instance i think the significant dollar amount a Million Dollars below the next contractor i mean that would raise a flag for me and i want to understand why we were forced to move in this direction, what were doing about it, when we have contractors that are that may not have the best track record, what are we doing to make sure that were not rewarding bad behavior because it feels like i know in the past we have settled lawsuits in some instances i think with this contractor we just fired and hired them back and i dont understand why were still moving in this direction and theres no safeguards in place in order to address it and if you can talk a little bit about the process and what the department of public works is proposing to change the process and how were gonna hold these contractors and subcontractors that are all over our city doing all of this work how are we holding them accountable and making sure that this kind of thing doesnt continue to happen