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AT&T Broadband
Illinois, Missouri, and Michigan, USA
AT&T
purchased TCI as part of its plan to provide
telephony over cables and to provide various
broadband services. The plan included
upgrading all TCI cable installations in
Chicago, St. Louis and Grand Rapids to 860
MHz. AT&T mandated use of materials from
General Instrument who was bought by
Motorola. As the AT&T purchase of was
announced, TCI engaged Black & Veatch (B&V)
to provide project management and
procurement services at a fixed price per
mile of cable upgrade or rebuild completed.
The actual completion was never reached
before AT&T suspended the work for financial
reasons after 24 months of execution when
only one third had been completed. AT&T
alleged deficient management by B&V and
claimed nearly the contract value in
impacts. B&V asserted the scope, type of
work, changed requirements to meet AT&T
evolving technical concepts, changed routing
to meet competition, and interference had
caused the project delay, lack of
completion, and increased cost to B&V
execution. B&V engaged Nielsen-Wurster to
perform independent evaluations of the
execution of each market, the causes for
delay and disruption, and management
performance by both AT&T and B&V.
Nielsen-Wurster provided expert
presentations at mediation. The parties
settled quite favorably to B&V.
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