A construction company based in North Dakota, Bilfinger Westcon, has filed several lawsuits against MarkWest Energy (now owned by Marathon Petroleum) claiming MarkWest has failed to pay more than $40 million for work done on a number of projects. Bilfinger Westcon says MarkWest used a “time & materials cap” scheme to cap the amount of money they paid for various projects, but then slipped in last-minute change orders. Essentially, it was a way of getting more work for free–that’s the charge being made. Bilfinger says MarkWest was getting ready to sell itself to Marathon and wanted to rush to complete several projects and using time & materials cap was how they did it without breaking the bank. We have to say this is the first time we’ve heard or read anything negative about MarkWest’s business practices. We suspect there’s another side to this story, but MarkWest says they won’t comment on pending litigation. Here’s the Bilfinger Westcon side of the story…
A construction company based in North Dakota, Bilfinger Westcon, has filed several lawsuits against MarkWest Energy (now owned by Marathon Petroleum) claiming MarkWest has failed to pay more than $40 million for work done on a number of projects. Bilfinger Westcon says MarkWest used a “time & materials cap” scheme to cap the amount of money they paid for various projects, but then slipped in last-minute change orders. Essentially, it was a way of getting more work for free–that’s the charge being made. Bilfinger says MarkWest was getting ready to sell itself to Marathon and wanted to rush to complete several projects and using time & materials cap was how they did it without breaking the bank. We have to say this is the first time we’ve heard or read anything negative about MarkWest’s business practices. We suspect there’s another side to this story, but MarkWest says they won’t comment on pending litigation. Here’s the Bilfinger Westcon side of the story…