Third-party personnel the MBTA hired to provide customer service rarely performed the desired amount of visual inspections in subway stations, and the T also could not prove that all of those workers completed required safety and operations training, the state auditor’s office said Sunday.
A new report from Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s office flagged several issues with the MBTA’s frontline customer service team, who are often found wearing red shirts in stations, provided by private vendor Block by Block (BBB). T officials pushed back on some of the findings, writing that one of the major takeaways relied on a flawed methodology.
In an audit that covered the period from Jan. 1, 2021 through Dec. 31, 2022, DiZoglio’s office found that BBB personnel completed the number of station checks the MBTA sought — two per hour — on only 6 percent of staffed, contracted days.
“A lack of regular station checks increases the risk that safety hazards and maintenance needs will not be identified in a timely manner, affecting the safety of the MBTA’s riders, employees, and subway stations,” the auditor’s office wrote. “If the MBTA does not ensure that the controls (such as visual inspections by BBB employees) it designed to prevent safety incidents from occurring are in place and working as intended, then its ability to protect its riders and employees will continue to be impaired.”
Audit Of MBTA, Block By Block Customer Service Performance
MBTA officials, who have ramped up their attention on station conditions under General Manager Phil Eng, replied that although the agency “encourages and requests” two to four station checks per hour, that threshold is “not a contractual requirement.” The agency also said DiZoglio’s team deployed a methodology that “negatively skews the data.”
“For example, if a second station inspection was conducted one minute after the hour, the [auditor’s office] nonetheless considered that hour to be a failure,” the T wrote in its response to the audit. “BBB staffed approximately 646,000 base hours during the audit period at various stations. A total of 1,743,971 total station checks were conducted during that same period, averaging to approximately 2.4 station checks per hour staffed.”
The MBTA first contracted with Block by Block in 2017 to provide in-station customer service, which the T previously offered using its own employees. The parties have a five-year, $102 million contract in place through September 2027.
DiZoglio’s office also raised concerns about training for the customer service agents. Among a sample of 60 workers, the T could not demonstrate that two completed MBTA safety training, and the T did not train 16 others about safety before assigning them to a subway station, according to the audit. The report said MBTA officials could not demonstrate that any of the 60 sample employees received operations training.
T officials told DiZoglio’s office they did in fact provide documentation that all 60 employees in that sample “were trained on operations and safety before being assigned to any independent shifts at subway stations.” Some of the gaps, they said, appeared to be a result of incorrectly recorded deployment dates rather than insufficient training.
But the auditor’s office said the evidence provided by the MBTA “was not sufficient.”
“In April 2024, the MBTA provided us with sign-in sheets documenting the date of safety training along with each BBB employee’s signature. We were able to trace all but two BBB employees to sign-in sheets,” auditors wrote. “The MBTA also provided us four Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, one of which was created in April 2024, as purported evidence of operations training that the MBTA indicated occurred in 2021 and 2022. The remaining three had been edited in April 2024. We were unable to substantiate whether these spreadsheets were altered prior to receiving them. This is unsatisfactory, as one of the documents was created two to three years after the training was reportedly conducted, while the others were edited prior to delivery to OSA and do not provide proof that the training occurred.”
Recommendations from DiZoglio’s office include implementing new monitoring steps to ensure Block by Block employees are fully trained on safety and operations before being deployed, retaining training records, and weaving an expectation of station checks into its contract with the company.
In a statement alongside the audit report, DiZoglio referenced a state law that requires public agencies to prove services will remain as good or better at a lower cost before privatizing work, like the T did with its station customer service.
“This contract, however, was executed by the prior Administration during a loophole period in which the [Taxpayer Protection Act] did not apply. Our audit found a number of issues and, while the T indicated interest in ‘moving towards active contract management,’ there is little evidence the T adequately improved contract management or performance in service to the public,” she said. “Riders, taxpayers and employees deserve better management of a contract worth tens of millions of their public dollars.”
The audit published Sunday is the first in a series of reports DiZoglio’s office prepared about its work examining safety and performance at the T, whose safety failures in recent years drew intense scrutiny from federal regulators and frustrated riders across the system.
Additional audit topics include the T’s contract with commuter rail provider Keolis, a massive contract to overhaul fare collection, and “additional topics focused on ensuring the safety of MBTA riders, employees, and the general public,” DiZoglio’s office wrote.
(Copyright (c) 2024 State House News Service.