Safety wasn't in the equation - By Alexandra Berzon and Michael Mishak, Las Vegas Sun
At this week’s Clark County Commission meeting, Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani noted a curiosity: Two weeks earlier, in the same meeting room, she and other public officials had expressed deep concern about worker safety at CityCenter.
Now the commission was poised to award a $1.2 billion contract for a new terminal at McCarran International Airport to Perini Building Co., the contractor that had overseen the projects whose safety problems were the focus of the earlier meeting. There have been six fatalities at Perini’s CityCenter site in 19 months, and three more workers have died on other Las Vegas Perini projects during that time.
As Giunchigliani noted, the county’s evaluation of Perini and other bidders vying for the airport contract did not take safety into account.
Some industry representatives saw that omission coming. Steve Holloway, vice president of Associated General Contractors in Las Vegas, had written a letter to commissioners before the hearing that said, in part: “I can see the headline now: Clark County Commissioners reward Perini for killing six workers.”