Federal transportation officials have barred the contractor responsible for manufacturing more than a thousand concrete panels for the Silver Line rail project from working on transportation projects involving federal funds for three years.
The decision by the Federal Transit Administration stems from work that Pennsylvania-based Universal Concrete Products did for the second phase of the rail-line extension.
In 2016, an employee at the company filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging he was fired after raising concerns about the company’s manufacturing process. A subsequent investigation by the U.S. Transportation Department’s inspector general and the FBI determined that the company had falsified quality-control tests and that some of the panels it had manufactured for the rail project were defective. In 2018, a quality-control inspector at the company pleaded guilty to wire fraud in connection with the case for his role in falsifying test data to show the concrete had passed inspection and for ordering others to do the same.
The company later settled a separate civil case brought by the Justice Department and the commonwealth of Virginia for $1 million.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Lori Aratani over at the Washington Post
