Corruption and unethical practices have, for a long time, imbued the construction industry in the US. The number of the parties involved in the construction project, the complexity of the project and also the location that the construction project is located makes it prone to such unethical practices. Most of the unethical practices carried out in these companies are more often engineered by greed, arrogance and in some cases, physical defects. In this paper, I will focus on the corruption scandal that involved one of the most reputable construction companies in the US: Hunter Roberts Construction Group (HRCG). I will analyze the scandal to determine the people involved, their roles and describe the nature if the unethical behavior they portrayed. I will also explain the consequences that the company accrued as result of this behavior.
Hunter Roberts Construction Group (HRCG) is a company with a good reputation based on the elegant and magnificent construction buildings they have produced over the years such as the BMW of Manhattan, the Yankee Stadium parking lots among other famous buildings (Murphy et al. 2015). However, its reputation fell into ruins after they were proven to have been involved in the corruption scandal of the reconstruction of Filterman Hall of the Manhattan Community College.
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Being one of the most reputable construction companies, HRCG was mandated to reconstruct the Filterman Hall of the Manhattan Community College, but they failed to exercise their ethical values. The company engaged itself in unethical and corruption behaviors of cheating its clients and fraudulently acquiring money that they did not legally deserve. This was done through inflation of the invoices by over quoting the building materials and the labor cost. This was later discovered to be a form of illegally acquiring more money from their clients during the annual auditing. It was also discovered that the company charged its clients more money for visual work that is, extra work that was not in the initial plan but they took advantage of the client’s ignorance about the constructions technicalities (Murphy et al. 2015). HRCG also billed their clients (Manhattan College) the expenses that they were supposed to cater. This included the incentive pay slip given to their employees to award them their loyalty.
The corruption was a well-schemed act as it involved some individuals from every department within the company. For instance, the inflation of the invoices was conducted by the finance department which was later approved by the financial manager of that specific project so that it could not raise the alarm (Horder et al. 2013). The foremen of the project were also actively involved in this corruption scandal as they were the ones signing in contracts of the visual work as explained above which attracted more illegal funding from the clients. The contractors also referred to as the contractors liaised with the finance department in over quoting the prices of the building materials and labor force which as a result lead to the inflated invoices.
However, this corruption act and the unethical behavior of the HRCG did not go unnoticed. After an investigation, there was concrete evidence that incriminated the company to this corruption scandal. The company was later sued, and a fine of over seven million US dollars was imposed on the company. The company was also was also forced to fire some of the employees who were found to be actively involved in the corruption scandal. The company was also put under the surveillance of Finance Fraud Enforcement Taskforce which it was required to actively involve the officials of this organ during their timesheet billing and recording procedures (Horder et al. 2013). This was an act of ensuring that the company will no longer acquire money illegally from their unsuspecting clients through inflation of the invoice as it was the case with the Manhattan Community College project.
References
Murphy, C., In Gardoni, P., In Bashir, H., In Harris, C. E., & In Masad, E. (2015). Engineering ethics for a globalized world.
Horder, J., & In Alldridge, P. (2013). Modern bribery law: Comparative perspectives .
