Concrete tester pleads guilty

From the Daily News:

A company that certified the safety of concrete at thousands of New York City construction projects admitted it regularly faked tests and made up inspection reports, authorities announced Friday.

American Standard Testing and Consulting Laboratories, and company president Alan Fortich, 45, pleaded to corruption charges for filing bogus tests over the last 10 years on an impressive list of high profile buildings. Five other executives admitted filing false documents.

They faked tests at Yankee Stadium, the Second Avenue subway, the Javits Center, a control tower at JFK Airport, the Port Authority bus terminal, the Lincoln Tunnel, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and a Columbia University science center.

The city, the MTA, the Port Authority and dozens of private sector builders were all victims, and dozens of buildings had to be retested to make sure the concrete used was not going to fall apart.

All the buildings were declared safe, Vance said. It wasn’t clear Friday who paid for the retests.

The guilty pleas make clear just how pervasive corruption was in the concrete testing business — American Standard was hired in 2008 to replace Testwell Inc., another firm indicted for faking concrete tests.

In admitting to enterprise corruption, a felony, American Standard will likely be barred from bidding on public contracts at the agencies affected.