I will comment on a couple of items. Our readers from outside construction should be aware that in the Federal and State construction world there are a variety of manners that Quality Control programs can be handled.
For example, in DOD contracting it is standard that the NAVFAC or USACE require the Contractor to provide a Quality Control Program, related staff and outside testing laboratories and consultants and the Government CM agency or their outside engineer provides a separate Quality Assurance Program. The former provides the day to day testing, performs stop-work functions and builds a complete and solid documentation of the QC Program’s actions while the QA Program provides a monitor and duplicate testing that reviews the former. Contractor QC representatives have some special chain-of-command independence and have fulfilled QC training programs conducted by the Government. A typical job-specific QC program is easily a 300 page document custom written for a project this size with a full time staff of 3 to 5 engineers with additional clerks.
In this instance, that is not the method that the Feds require, but Kiewitt can provide it probably better than DWR for CA — i.e. I would trust them more if I lived below the dam.
What we have is a "knowledge inversion". This FERC/DWR document illustrates a "freshman" (at best) level of expertise & knowledge in this QCIP example.
The same is true for the "freshman" (at best) level of expertise in the engineering recognition of many "signs" of pre-spillway dangers that are spillway killers. They did nothing.
So bringing up this QCIP FERC/DWR interchange example is a highlight of the bigger problem of DWR - Do they have the true expertise to operate, maintain, and do engineering on a high-reliability structure that affects lives and property to hundreds of thousands of residents immediately below the dam.