By GREGORY N. HEIRES

The Metropolitan Transit Authority is on track to waste $250 million over several years by contracting out design work for the future 2nd Avenue subway.

Meanwhile, it is saving millions of taxpayers' dollars by relying on in-house union professionals to plan and supervise the reconstruction of the sections of the 1 and 9 subway line destroyed on Sept. 11.

The terrorist attack collapsed about 1,200 feet of the subway between the Chambers Street Station and the Rector Street Station. Some 600,000 riders a day relied on the service to get to work, so MTA New York City Transit is under trem-endous pressure to get the system running again.

The goal is to restore service by the fall - a two-year job that the union team expects to finish in six months.

"We cut out the middleman," said Associate Railroad Signals Specialist Joe Cristiano, who estimates that assigning signal work to in-house staff rather than contracting out has saved several million dollars.

As the project speeds along, Local 375 members like Mr. Cristiano take tremendous pride in the being part of the mammoth undertaking. They say their work shows why contracting out is unnecessary and wasteful. "There is no way that consultants could have carried out this project as quickly and efficiently as our members," said Robert Mariano, treasurer of Local 375 and president of its Transit chapter. "The agency in effect recognized this by keeping the work in-house."

Twice recently, Local President Claude Fort accompanied members to Ground Zero to gain a first-hand impression of the operation. "This project should serve as a model for Transit," Mr. Fort said. "It is astonishing to consider that our members turned over the design work in just a few weeks and will be responsible for seeing that the reconstruction gets completed in record time."

Backing Mr. Cristiano's assertion, Local 375 adviser Leon Soffin estimates that Transit saved millions of dollars by keeping the design work and project management in-house. Typically, the salary and overhead of private companies for such work adds up to twice the cost of that of staffers. The necessary in-house review of consultants' work adds another 20 percent on top of the firms' fees.

Engineer John Malvasio was among about 100 Local 375 members from the Maintenance of Way unit who initially inspected the damage to the subway. Their disciplines included infrastructure, electricity, signals, communications, mechanical engineer-ing, field inspection and communications.

As the excavation began, they watchdogged the work to ensure that workers using heavy machinery didn't cause any further harm to the subway system, Mr. Malvasio said. Their damage assessment guided the union members who worked on the design.

Surveyors, including Administrative Engineer Matthew Molahan, played a key support role in blueprinting the renovations.

By using old surveys and carrying out new studies, they provided designers with drawings of the vast underground network of sewer pipes and utility cables in the tunnel area, Mr. Molahan said. The team conducted nine surveys. Then the workers produced computer-based drawings of the northern and southern sections of the area.

New digitized drawings
Clotilde Ferrer, an Assistant Transit Manager Analyst Level 2, was part of the team of about 10 members who worked on the drawings of the new tunnel. She produced a 40-foot map that wraps around three walls of a conference room in Transit headquarters at 2 Broadway in Lower Manhattan.

Working with original subway plans dating as far back as 1915, Ms. Ferrer and her coworkers used sophisticated computer software to create new digitized drawings of the tunnel. "It is very exciting work, because it is like putting together the pieces to a puzzle," she said.

All told, the team produced two huge volumes with about 350 drawings. Besides drafting plans for the tunnel, tracks and platforms, Local 375 members have also designed two giant underground rooms for the subway ventilation system.

Ihab "Bobby" Shafei, an Engineer Level 2 in Capital Program Management, is the acting project engineer for the 1 and 9 job.

During the early phase, Mr. Shafei worked on designing and planning. He and his colleagues needed to study the foundations of area buildings before the tunnel could be designed.

"What we are doing is almost impossible," said Mr. Shafei, who is now monitoring the estimated $92 million construction job, which has been awarded to a partnership of Tully Construction and Pegno Construction.

"Under normal circumstances, this should take at least two years. We are planning to do it in about six months."