Corning sheds light on fiber optics at O'Hare

Life has its moments of odd synchronicity. We were eating dinner Monday evening on our white Corning USA plates — baked salmon, green beans, spinach pie — when Corning Inc. called.

Officials at Corning Inc. — no longer making dinnerware, having shed that business in 1998 — were concerned about that day’s column on Cristina and John Beran, who run a contracting business and were complaining about their difficulty bidding on a job installing Corning fiber-optic cables at the long-delayed O’Hare expansion project. Had I seen their email? No. Email goes astray. They forwarded it.

Corning wants to “correct some inaccuracies.” They seemed almost hurt at being ignored.

“Unfortunately, we were not contacted beforehand to help fact check these claims and we want to ensure accuracy for your readers,” they wrote, assuming a certain ex cathedra tone. They had truth in a bucket and were going to dole some out to me.

I own the sin of not trying to contact them. While I was busy pestering the Chicago Department of Aviation — still mum, though it’s our money — and the Inspector General, I shrugged off the idea of also tossing pebbles at the windows of Corning Optical Communications. I couldn’t get Smucker’s to comment on why their peanut butter is so delicious. What were the hopes that Corning would wade into Chicago procurement politics?

After reading Corning’s concerns, I volunteered to try to summarize them here.

Their five-point correction begins:

“Corning is the industry leader and inventor of many wireless connectivity solutions for large projects such as stadiums, airports, hotels, hospitals, and other high-density environments.”

No argument here. Nothing in my column suggests otherwise.

The second reads:

“For this project, the bid specifications for Corning-manufactured products involve the Terminal 5 parking garage at Chicago O’Hare International Airport and not the full airport modernization.”

Again, I didn’t suggest the whole place is being wrapped in one enormous fiber-optic knit sweater. Though that might look cool.

Moving on:

“Under the specifications, installers are permitted to ask for substitution of other manufacturers’ products at the time of bid...”

What the Berans are permitted to request isn’t the issue; it’s what they got — nada — that is the sticking point.

Asked to boil down their feedback, Corning explained: “Corning sells through national distributors who set the prices on products. For this project, installers could substitute an approved manufacturer at the time of bid as long as they were certified by the manufacturer. “

Corning wasn’t alone in responding. Other executives also believe, passionately, that everything is on the level.

“As a director of telecommunications for a large entity, I oversee many fiber optic construction projects across Chicagoland,” one began. “When you put these projects out to bid, you must specify every detail in a bid spec to ensure all bid responses are equal.”

Chicago Department of Aviation

Workers in the trenches, however, detect trouble in paradise:

“Hey Neil I’ve been in construction for 20 years your article on fiber optics is right on the money. Everyone in the businesses knows damn well how the whole thing works: it’s wink wink all around. Unfortunately the professional class hired to protect against this, the owners’ reps, are fully in the game. It makes work fully unable to be competitively bid. They yadda about specs ... but the bottom line for the job is no bidding. Just so you know the term is ‘flat speccing’ when you say something is flat specced it means the spec for the job has been used to eliminate bidding. It’s stealing, plan and simple.”

Space doesn’t allow me, alas, to share the full Corning retort. The key sentiment seems to be the concluding lines: “Corning offers a 25-year warranty for any certified installers. To provide this extended warranty we work closely with installers to ensure they are fully trained on how to properly install our solutions to meet quality assurances and industry standards. We offered Chicago Voice and Data Authority an opportunity to provide that 25-year warranty for this site upon successful installation...”

That last sentence refers to the Berans’ company, so now would be the moment to check in with the Berans on how they regard that offer. Experience, however, teaches me otherwise.

When readers try to draw me into writing about messy divorces, for example, I invariably decline, telling them such stories always devolve into a depressing he-said, she-said tug-o-war. Regular readers know I enjoy writing about construction — concrete poured, pipes lain, manhole covers forged. The bidding process that goes beforehand, well, not so much. If you feel the process is more fair and logical than I’ve outlined in the past two columns — or more opaque and corrupt — I respect that. Dividing the former from the latter is where good people disagree.