Caltrans paid $640,000 to print 30 million pages. Then it destroyed most of the documents

A midlevel Caltrans manager gave an order in June to destroy 19 million pieces of paper the department had paid to print eight months earlier.

The order concluded a lengthy bureaucratic saga outlined in email exchanges The Sacramento Bee obtained through the Public Records Act.

Printed on the pages were construction standards and specifications that contractors refer to when they’re building state-funded projects. Had they not been destroyed, the double-sided pages would have been bound into 19,500 sets of reference books and sold to the contractors, along with local agencies around California that use them.

For months, the manager juggled conflicting orders from above and subordinates’ worries about waste. While the unbound books sat around, costs mounted.

Caltrans ultimately paid the Office of State Printing $640,000 for far fewer of the books than it would have received under an original plan with a $565,000 price tag.

Caltrans has printed the books every few years for decades, periodically updating its guidelines, and in recent years has posted the standards online.

“It’s kind of like the Caltrans bible for specifying how they want the work built,” said Greg Souder, an estimating manager with Berkeley-based engineering contractor O.C. Jones. “You have to have it in one version or another.”

Engineers keep copies of the standards in their offices, and construction managers often refer to them on job sites, according to contractors.

In late 2017, a Caltrans steering committee discussed switching to electronic-only copies of the standards, as New York, New Jersey and Florida had done, but decided against it, according to emails.

In August 2018, Caltrans Chief Engineer Karla Sutliff signed a memorandum of understanding outlining a process for posting the standards online and printing the books. The memo said the 2018 standards would be used for all projects starting Oct. 22.

Officials in Caltrans’ Division of Design decided to print 30,000 sets of the books based on historical demand and bulk pricing options. Each set included three volumes.

The price was $565,302, according to Office of State Publishing quotes.

The office printed the 30,000 sets in October 2018, but only bound 5,000 copies into books initially due to delays with another project, according to emails.

The remaining 25,000 sets — about 25 million unbound pages — sat on pallets in a warehouse. Managers would order 5,500 more to be bound in January.

Paul Chung, a design engineering program principal in the Division of Design, gave the order in June to recycle the remaining 19,500 sets.

Caltrans declined an interview request.

“After we started printing hard copies of the contract standard book sets, Caltrans received feedback from stakeholders that the digital version of the books was sufficient, and there was no longer the same need for as many printed copies of these books as in years past,” spokesman Matt Rocco said in an email. “Also, Caltrans staff in the field was able to transition to the digital version much sooner than expected.”

‘Costing the taxpayers’

Emails suggest Sutliff, the chief engineer and Chung’s boss, had doubts in the middle of printing in October 2018 about whether to continue with the process she had outlined. She said she was unavailable for comment.

The Bee’s August 2019 request to Caltrans for all emails and spending records related to the printing of the standards didn’t produce any emails from Sutliff, who had a decision-making role in what to do about the books. She retired in September, according to Caltrans.

In an Oct. 3, 2018 email related to finishing the books, Chung wrote, “Karla has some instruction, let’s talk this morning. Need some quick action this week.”

In a followup email, Chung asked Mohsen Sultan, chief of the Office of Construction Contract Standards, for contracts and other agreements related to the books, anticipating “questions likely from Karla.”

The back-and-forth continued for months, with Chung asking Sultan about various options, storage fees and other details and Sultan relaying answers from the Office of State Publishing. Sultan repeatedly explained Caltrans’ contractual obligations while reminding Chung that executive managers had been kept informed about the process all along.

Reducing the number of books to bind wouldn’t save money, due to the discounts Caltrans was receiving based on the large volume of the order, Sultan wrote. The publishing office had already contracted with vendors to fulfill parts of the order at lower prices than the office would able to offer on its own, according to emails to Sultan from the office.

On Oct. 30, Sultan wrote the following in an email to Chung:

“It seems we continue to be on a fact finding mission. The reality is we printed 30,000 copies and the decision to print was made by a higher authority than us alone in Project Delivery. The more we try to undo the past, the more we are costing the taxpayers in return for much less value and that goes against our Mission and Goals.”

In response, Chung asked about another detail of binding costs.

Chung’s emails reflect uncertainty about how much demand there would be for the printed books. Three big contractors told Caltrans they only needed one hard copy each, and otherwise could go digital, according to the emails.

Sultan told Chung that demand for the books had been based partly on how many of the books from 2015 had sold. Caltrans printed about 15,000 sets of the 2015 standards and sold nearly all of them in a year and four months, according to an email from Sultan. A waiting list accrued after that.

In December, Chung launched an online survey among project a group of contractors to estimate demand. When a third responded, requesting a total of 800 copies, Chung multiplied that number by three and determined there was demand for 2,400 books. Based on that, he and two other executives decided on 3,000 books.

The publishing office said in January that it could bind as few as 5,500 books based on the logistics involved. On Jan. 31, Division of Design staffer Grace Tsushima relayed an order to the publishing office to bind 5,500 books and to continue storing the 19,500 books at a price of $5,000 per month.

Another publisher sells the books

As delays lengthened, contractors and public agencies started asking about the new books.

When Caltrans still wasn’t selling them in 2019, customers started getting them from another source: a publisher based in Vista, California named BNI Building News that prints and binds the standards.

Nevada County Public Works office administrator Kim Williamson told Caltrans on June 6 that she bought a copy from BNI after Caltrans told her they still didn’t have the books.

Sultan raised the issue of copyright infringement with the Caltrans legal office. Deputy Attorney Maria Sapiandante told him Caltrans bought a copy from BNI and reviewed it, finding it was nearly identical to the Caltrans book. Sapiandante said the office was considering next steps.

The books are still available for order on BNI’s website.

The three-volume sets of books include two volumes that make up the 2018 Standard Specifications, totaling 1,352 pages, and one volume of Standard Plans, which is 632 pages.

BNI sells the two-volume specifications for $59.95, according to its website. Caltrans sells it for $78. BNI sells the Standard Plans book for $49.95, while Caltrans sells it for $63.

BNI’s publisher did not respond to attempts to reach him Wednesday.

Contractors said demand varies for hard copies of the books.

“I like having the physical copy, maybe because I’m 56 years old,” said Souder, of O.C. Jones in Berkeley. “I don’t like reading stuff on the computer screen.”

Other contractors prefer to look at the standards on electronic tablets, due to the ease of navigating by searching for specific terms, said John Cooper, director of labor relations for the Southern California Contractors Association.

Caltrans has sold 2,500 sets of books since July, Rocco said.

More money, fewer books

On June 11, Joe Cole, a customer service representative at the Office of State Publishing, emailed Sultan saying the $565,000 that Caltrans had agreed to pay for 30,000 sets of the books had been depleted.

That left Caltrans with only 10,500 bound sets of books after paying for 30,000 sets.

And the department owed the Office of State Publishing $75,000 more for freight, storage and extra costs that resulted from the office having to complete several parts of the order in-house that it originally planned to pay a vendor for, including lamination.

The $75,000 estimate for added costs was based on the publishing office storing the books through the end of June. The office was moving to a new location and couldn’t store them past July, Cole said.

On June 20, Chung left a voicemail telling Sultan to instruct the publishing office to recycle the remaining 19,500 sets.

The publishing office originally told Caltrans it would cost $12,500 to recycle the roughly 19 million pages, but decided against charging the department for that.

This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 5:00 AM.