SLOW CLIMB: The rebuilding of the stairway at the Great Neck station ran overtime and overbudget. (
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An LIRR crew assigned to replace a staircase routinely showed up late and left early — a racket that cost the agency at least $130,000 in extra labor costs and doubled the time necessary to complete the job, according to a report.
The work at the Great Neck station was one of three in-house repair projects where MTA Inspector General Barry Kluger found workers goofing off, indicating a “systemic” problem in the railroad’s Structural Maintenance Division, which employs 82 people.
The IG also found that supervisors failed to set budgets for jobs — a standard procedure for private contractors — and did not create documents to estimate how long jobs would take.
It took workers six months to replace the stairs at Great Neck in 2011 — a job that an outside engineering consultant estimated should have taken just 2 1/2 months.
That consultant — hired by Kluger — estimated that it would have cost $131,305 to do the job in that time frame.
That’s about half of the LIRR’s $261,428 six-month price tag.
A Manhattan building contractor, meanwhile, told The Post that his company likely could have finished the job in less than three months for about $140,000.
jennifer.fermino@nypost.com