Investigation of Alleged Contract Steering by the National Park Service’s Denver Service Center

We investigated an allegation that Samuel Whittington, Director of the National Park Service’s Denver Service Center (DSC), steered a contract to the engineering and construction firm McDonough Bolyard Peck, Inc. (MBP), in an effort to employ the services of an MBP senior construction manager. We found that the integrity of the procurement process for this contract was compromised because Whittington had expressed a preference for the MBP construction manager and because a DSC contracting employee had given the construction manager insight into evaluation criteria and pricing that other bidders did not receive. 

 

During our investigation, we learned that the chief of DSC’s contracting division had asked one of her staff members to remove information from the file for this contract before we visited the division’s offices and that she asked her staff if they knew who might have filed the complaint about Whittington. The contracting chief acknowledged asking a staff member to remove information from the contract file because she thought it might reflect poorly on her office; she also acknowledged asking her staff if they knew who had complained to us but said she realized later that doing so was not appropriate.

 

After we issued the report to the National Park Service, we learned that Whittington has retired.