Gilbane Building Company is taking heavy fire after regulators hit the construction giant with a $1.9 million penalty for misrepresenting its compliance with diversity requirements on the Worcester Polar Park development, a high-profile project that relied on public dollars and carried strict mandates for minority business participation.
The fine has reignited concerns about the company’s conduct on government projects, including earlier allegations of False Claims Act violations that cost the firm $1.1 million in a separate Massachusetts settlement.
The controversy lands at an awkward moment for Gilbane, which is part of the Fort Lauderdale Beacon Collaborative and is seeking to win the contract to build Fort Lauderdale’s new City Hall. That effort now unfolds under a cloud after investigators concluded the firm “fudged” key numbers involving minority business enterprise contracting at Polar Park, inflating its reports to suggest broader participation than actually occurred. Those findings cut directly against the public commitments Gilbane made to officials and taxpayers when the ballpark project was approved.
Public records and court filings paint a bleak picture of how the company handled its obligations. Instead of meeting the project’s diversity goals, Gilbane allegedly massaged its figures to protect its own standing and preserve the appearance of compliance. The result, according to regulators, wasn’t a harmless clerical error but a deliberate distortion that cost...
(Washington, D.C.) – Akin announced today that Sara McLean has joined the firm as a regulatory and health care & life sciences partner in Washington, D.C. A luminary in the False Claims Act (FC...