LANSING — An audit released Wednesday identifies significant quality control problems related to the gravel the Michigan Department of Transportation uses to build and repair roads.
The state road agency often did not document that it completed required testing to ensure the gravel met specifications and also failed to perform required inspections on laboratories used to carry out the testing, according to the report from Michigan Auditor General Doug Ringler.
The failures have a "potential negative impact on the quality of construction projects," the report says, in a state where crumbling roads have long been a major issue for voters and where Gov. Gretchen Whitmer campaigned on a pledge to "fix the damn roads" in both 2018 and 2022.
MDOT largely agreed with the auditor's findings and recommendations. In comments incorporated into the report, it blamed short staffing for some of the lapses and said new processes have either addressed most of the identified problems, or soon will.
The Free Press has reported previously on a cozy relationship between MDOT and the state's gravel industry, which has been pushing for changes to state law that will further limit the authority of local governments to prevent gravel mines from being dug or expanded. In 2019, the Free Press, based on emails obtained under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act, reported that the Michigan Aggregates Association secretly orchestrated an MDOT report identifying a gravel shortage in Michigan, recommending the consultant MDOT hired, setting out the scope of work, and even spelling out the expected findings.
The audit released Wednesday is "about processes, many of which were already being improved," said MDOT spokesman Jeff Cranson. "It is in no way related to the industry/legislative efforts concerning more mining." Cranson said the auditor found shortfalls in the agency's process and controls but "did not make any determination that actual testing was missed on specific projects." Visual inspections are also important and were always performed, and "MDOT is confident that the aggregate used in construction meets MDOT’s specifications," he said.
However, the audit does show a failure by MDOT to document that it subjects gravel suppliers to the level of scrutiny required by department policy or state law. That's a significant finding, because some critics say a major problem with Michigan roads is poor quality construction, while MDOT officials are more likely to cite other factors, such as the state's freeze-thaw cycle, or a lack of adequate road funding.
MDOT allows gravel suppliers to "pre-qualify" their product by meeting certain standards and thereby reducing the amount of required testing going forward. But being pre-qualified requires the gravel supplier to provide MDOT with weekly shipping summaries, the report said. MDOT uses the volumes set out in those summaries to determine what further testing is required.
But the auditor found MDOT could not provide required documentation showing it had received weekly summaries from 18, or 45%, of the pre-qualified gravel suppliers the auditor surveyed. MDOT said six of those 18 suppliers were inactive and should have been removed from the pre-qualified list, but for the others, the auditor could not determine whether the lack of weekly summaries resulted in a lack of required testing.
"We consider this finding to be a material condition because of the ... potential negative impact on construction projects," the report said.
In its response, MDOT said the weekly summaries are not the major factor in determining what testing is required and the issue is expected to be resolved when a new database system, expected to be completed in May of next year, goes into full use next November.
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The audit also identified MDOT lapses in ensuring gravel suppliers met the requirements to become pre-qualified.
The auditor sampled 14 suppliers who achieved pre-qualified status between 2018 and 2021 and found that in 71% of the cases, MDOT did not perform required initial inspections of the testing labs the gravel suppliers used, and for half of the pre-qualified suppliers, their quality control plans did not include one or more of the required elements.
The audit found that MDOT also failed to ensure that required testing was performed on gravel received from suppliers who were not pre-qualified.
The auditor reviewed 50 MDOT construction projects awarded between 2018 and 2021 that used at least one gravel supplier who was not pre-qualified and found that for nine of those projects, MDOT could not show that testing was performed at the required frequency. For the other 41 projects, which were identified for physical testing of the gravel, MDOT did not conduct required abrasion tests on the gravel for 12, or 29%, of the projects.
MDOT said gravel suppliers "did not request compliance testing as required in the manual, and as a result of staffing limitations, testing was not always performed," according to the report.
The audit also identified shortfalls related to required quality control inspections of laboratories used to test the gravel.
State law requires MDOT to establish and maintain a system of efficient and effective internal control techniques. MDOT procedures require the labs to be inspected every other year to ensure compliance with state and federal standards.
But in a random sample of 40 pre-qualified gravel suppliers, the auditor found that in 36, or 90% of the cases, the labs the suppliers used were not inspected at the required frequency.
Three out of four of the suppliers did not have any lab inspections between Oct. 1, 2018, and June 30, 2021, the auditor found.
The lack of inspections was also a problem for labs used by gravel suppliers who were not pre-qualified, the audit found. For 17 surveyed projects involving suppliers who were not pre-qualified, in which MDOT used a third-party lab for testing, 59% of the labs had not been inspected in the prior two years, the auditor found.
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4.
