Violations 101
"the College had no competitive procurement process for 31 years of facility services awarded to the contractor. This direct awarding of contracted services was contrary to B.C. public-sector procurement policy."
In fact, VCC had no written agreement with the company on file since 1990, and that one was only a draft.
"No effective oversight of this contractor's performance, leading to significant non-compliance with life-safety laws," the audit concludes.
VCC safety violations cited in government audit
Vancouver Community College is a trades, music and languages school that bills itself as "B.C.'s Number One College."
The college is subject to city fire bylaws, the B.C. Fire Code, Worksafe B.C. regulations, and B.C. and federal environmental regulations. At times, most of these were violated.
"No effective oversight of this contractor's performance, leading to significant non-compliance with life-safety laws," the audit concludes. Moreover, an independent review commissioned by the college in June 2007 noted that "much of the maintenance and upkeep of electrical facilities and mechanical equipment at both campuses reflected general neglect over a long period of time."
And the true scope of the problem is still unknown, the auditors wrote, because they had been partially stonewalled.
VCC did not supply the records requested for their investigation, even though "there were legal requirements for the College to have kept such records... Where we could not reach a conclusion in regard to some of the complainants' concerns regarding life safety, this was because of a lack of adequate documentation being made available to us."
The auditors noted other management failings, and "partially confirmed" a complaint that "the contractor charged for regular service services PPM [planned preventative maintenance] work not fully performed." Moreover, "An important control instituted by the College in 1995 to help prevent and detect any double-charges of the contractor's staff time between regular and extra services was allowed to lapse."
The VCC audit still has value as a cautionary tale. Could such a situation as described in it happen again? Perhaps, says Gregory Thomas, B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, who adds he has never seen anything like the VCC case before, but he is ultimately not surprised by it. "There is not the level of oversight in these public institutions that we see in the private sector," he said. "It's incumbent on all the public, and not just the students who are harmed by this, to insist on more accountability."
Read more: http://www.vancourier.com/safety+violations+cited+government+audit/5001790/story.html#ixzz1QFa6wH9D
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