If the dead guy wanted better accommodations.

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dennishoddy

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Totally agree that place needs fixed. I'm not sure why we have so much trouble building and running jails.
It's because state/county/municipal law says all contracts must be given to the lowest bidder.
The lowest bidder typically has the least educated or dumbest engineers to design the facility for the lowest cost with some under the table untraceable trips to Cancun or elsewhere for the people that make the decision to go or not go with the contract.
Untraceable you say? Happens every day. The person being influenced takes the trip on their personal credit card so that it appears everything is aboveboard.
A week or two later, a cash envelope is delivered. Filter the money back into the account or just keep it as cash to spend and it's not traceable.
We had an engineer/manager at our workplace back in the day that was doing this. He didn't make enough money to take trips up the amazon on first class river boats and other exotic destinations on his salary. The decisions he made about millions of dollars of equipment he was responsible for just didn't make sense and cost the company millions to correct.
 

John6185

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The convicts can attend college, have cable TV, dental care, medical treatment, room and board, access to a law library clothing and I don't know what else since I've never been there but none of them have a Happy Birthday.
 

HFS

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Back when I was working for the OSBI, I was told that "prisoners" preferred prison time over jail time. In jail, they couldn't have TV's and many other amenities, but in prison they could.
I heard that a lot of older jails had to ban smoking for safety or insurance reasons, while inmates could still smoke in prison (was told this several years ago). Don't know if it was true.
 

Jcann

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It's because state/county/municipal law says all contracts must be given to the lowest bidder.
The lowest bidder typically has the least educated or dumbest engineers to design the facility for the lowest cost with some under the table untraceable trips to Cancun or elsewhere for the people that make the decision to go or not go with the contract.
Untraceable you say? Happens every day. The person being influenced takes the trip on their personal credit card so that it appears everything is aboveboard.
A week or two later, a cash envelope is delivered. Filter the money back into the account or just keep it as cash to spend and it's not traceable.
We had an engineer/manager at our workplace back in the day that was doing this. He didn't make enough money to take trips up the amazon on first class river boats and other exotic destinations on his salary. The decisions he made about millions of dollars of equipment he was responsible for just didn't make sense and cost the company millions to correct.

I retired from ODOT in 2015. All of our furniture purchases had to go through OSI prison contracts except for items which could not be purchased from them. Most if not all of there products were more expensive than if you bought them from a local business.

Secondly, I now work for the company which designed the OKC jail years ago. At that time it was called RGDC and was an established civil engineering firm with a new architectural group. I’m unsure what happened at that time but RGDC took a beating on that project. It has since changed names two times with outgoing/incoming principals. All government contracts go through a competitive bid process and “low bidder” isn’t always the one awarded the contract. In my 40 years of civil engineering highway construction plans and being around the contract bid process in both state/private dealings I have never heard or witnessed kickbacks or promises made. The men and women I work with, both engineers and CAD Techs are highly intelligent and take great pains to produce quality design plans. We contract with the state of Okla, OTA, and numerous cities and municipalities. Most if not all major interchanges in the state are designed through private consulting engineering firms because ODOT isn’t equipped to take on these projects. If it’s an urban interstate project, chances are it wasn’t designed by ODOT. I-40 out by Sooner Rd. is our project. I-40 and Douglas will one day soon have a single point urban interchange (SPUI). I-40 and Morgan Rd SPUI was our project. I could go on and on with the hundreds of miles of roadway we have designed. If we were dumb or lazy we wouldn’t have the work load we currently have and wouldn’t be considered one of the top five firms in the state.

Sure, the owners of these companies make a good living but that is through the reputation of their quality of work, experience and expertise of the staff, the bid process and the multiplier used. They also pay their employees quite well too but, we damn sure earn it.
 
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TerryMiller

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I retired from ODOT in 2015. All of our furniture purchases had to go through OSA prison contracts except for items which could not be purchased from them. Most if not all of there products were more expensive than if you bought them from a local business.

Secondly, I now work for the company which designed the OKC jail years ago. At that time it was called RGDC and was an established civil engineering firm with a new architectural group. I’m unsure what happened at that time but RGDC took a beating on that project. It has since changed names two times with outgoing/incoming principals. All government contracts go through a competitive bid process and “low bidder” isn’t always the one awarded the contract. In my 40 years of civil engineering highway construction plans and being around the contract bid process in both state/private dealings I have never heard or witnessed kickbacks or promises made. The men and women I work with, both engineers and CAD Techs are highly intelligent and take great pains to produce quality design plans. We contract with the state of Okla, OTA, and numerous cities and municipalities. Most if not all major interchanges in the state are designed through private consulting engineering firms because ODOT isn’t equipped to take on these projects. If it’s an urban interstate project, chances are it wasn’t designed by ODOT. I-40 out by Sooner Rd. is our project. I-40 and Douglas will one day soon have a single point urban interchange (SPUI). I-40 and Morgan Rd SPUI was our project. I could go on and on with the hundreds of miles of roadway we have designed. If we were dumb or lazy we wouldn’t have the work load we currently have and wouldn’t be considered one of the top five firms in the state.

Sure, the owners of these companies make a good living but that is through the reputation of their quality of work, experience and expertise of the staff, the bid process and the multiplier used. They also pay their employees quite well too but, we damn sure earn it.

This is a far better report for dealing with the state than what happened with the legislature when they wanted to consolidate the IT services for the state. They "contracted" with a company that had failed in other states to do the same job. We mentioned it to some of the legislature and they said they were told that "the company had 'learned' from their experiences with the other states."

Today, the state agency over all the IT services has now outsourced some of their technical support to a private company. Probably just so they could say they are saving money because they now have "fewer employees." No mention of all the other fiduciary nonsense that the agency pulled.
 

jakeman

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I retired from ODOT in 2015. All of our furniture purchases had to go through OSI prison contracts except for items which could not be purchased from them. Most if not all of there products were more expensive than if you bought them from a local business.

Secondly, I now work for the company which designed the OKC jail years ago. At that time it was called RGDC and was an established civil engineering firm with a new architectural group. I’m unsure what happened at that time but RGDC took a beating on that project. It has since changed names two times with outgoing/incoming principals. All government contracts go through a competitive bid process and “low bidder” isn’t always the one awarded the contract. In my 40 years of civil engineering highway construction plans and being around the contract bid process in both state/private dealings I have never heard or witnessed kickbacks or promises made. The men and women I work with, both engineers and CAD Techs are highly intelligent and take great pains to produce quality design plans. We contract with the state of Okla, OTA, and numerous cities and municipalities. Most if not all major interchanges in the state are designed through private consulting engineering firms because ODOT isn’t equipped to take on these projects. If it’s an urban interstate project, chances are it wasn’t designed by ODOT. I-40 out by Sooner Rd. is our project. I-40 and Douglas will one day soon have a single point urban interchange (SPUI). I-40 and Morgan Rd SPUI was our project. I could go on and on with the hundreds of miles of roadway we have designed. If we were dumb or lazy we wouldn’t have the work load we currently have and wouldn’t be considered one of the top five firms in the state.

Sure, the owners of these companies make a good living but that is through the reputation of their quality of work, experience and expertise of the staff, the bid process and the multiplier used. They also pay their employees quite well too but, we damn sure earn it.


The jail was poorly designed and it was poorly built. I was involved in the construction. Letters were written. Meetings were had. "You can't do that like that, it won't work" was repeated over and over and over again. By both subcontractors and suppliers. I've also been involved in numerous efforts to fix the shoddy construction. Most of those attempts have failed.

That jail is a shithole. It needs to be imploded and a parking lot should be built there. It has bad bones, and 30 years of trying to fix it has been nothing more than throwing good money after bad. It can't be fixed. The problems run too deep. This isn't about the creature comforts of the people that are guests of the state/county/city there. It's about the people that work there and are tasked with operating it and maintaining it. It would be a huge favor to the taxpayers if it were demolished and a proper jail was designed and built according to the specifications and drawings.
 

Snattlerake

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The jail was poorly designed and it was poorly built. I was involved in the construction. Letters were written. Meetings were had. "You can't do that like that, it won't work" was repeated over and over and over again. By both subcontractors and suppliers. I've also been involved in numerous efforts to fix the shoddy construction. Most of those attempts have failed.

That jail is a shithole. It needs to be imploded and a parking lot should be built there. It has bad bones, and 30 years of trying to fix it has been nothing more than throwing good money after bad. It can't be fixed. The problems run too deep. This isn't about the creature comforts of the people that are guests of the state/county/city there. It's about the people that work there and are tasked with operating it and maintaining it. It would be a huge favor to the taxpayers if it were demolished and a proper jail was designed and built according to the specifications and drawings.

Tell us what the design problem was. Wasn't it supposed to be one of the new state of the art 'pod' design instead of the old multitiered rows of cells? The pods are supposed to act like cul-de-sacs each having its' own function. The pods are supposed to provide unrestricted line of site and ease of accessibility. What I heard was the construction material wasn't according to specs and they cheaped out on about everything.
 

jakeman

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Tell us what the design problem was. Wasn't it supposed to be one of the new state of the art 'pod' design instead of the old multitiered rows of cells? The pods are supposed to act like cul-de-sacs each having its' own function. The pods are supposed to provide unrestricted line of site and ease of accessibility. What I heard was the construction material wasn't according to specs and they cheaped out on about everything.


There are hundreds if not thousands of design issues with that facility. They are too numerous to mention, but I'll start with them not using security caulking plus the glass block and the mortar used to secure them. The mortar holding the place up is suspect at best. Clear coating CMU block without filling the porous surface. Leaking water pipes throughout. The lower pod showers not being usable due to water pouring thru the concrete above filling the light fixtures below creating an electrocution hazard. The concrete itself being unsound. The plumbing systems being woefully inadequate and poorly installed. Mechanical passageways not constructed correctly. It goes on and on and on. It was built haphazardly, and with very little 3rd party inspection, if any. A frightening amount of the construction was done out of sequence, which didn't allow subcontractors to complete their work properly.

They've been working on it for 31 years, and it started before they moved in and it continues to this day. The facility has never been right. The design firm let the GC get away with things that most people wouldn't allow in the construction of a storage shed, and the tax payers have footed the bill ever since.

County Suing Jail Builders Over Flaws (oklahoman.com)
 
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