By Florida Daily Investments
FORT LAUDERDALE — A week after a blistering internal audit exposed serious flaws in Broward County Public Schools’ latest construction procurement, district leadership returned to the school board Tuesday to ask for a do-over. Critics say the move comes only after Superintendent Howard Hepburn and Chief Operating Officer Wanda Paul themselves stalled the process.
Superintendent Hepburn announced plans to ask the board to reject all bids submitted under RFQ 26-059, but despite repeated warnings from school board members and in-house counsel, Superintendent Hepburn pursued that very request.
The decision effectively acknowledges that an audit revealed that the procurement process was fundamentally broken from the beginning.
However, rejecting the bid does not erase the damage. Instead, the board will face the same crisis its members warned about months ago — no clear path forward, a looming deadline, and a real possibility that leadership’s failure to plan could result in it declaring an “emergency” to extend the contract with AECOM.
Crisis created – then reset
The audit, authored by lead auditor Dave Rose, concluded that RFQ 26-059 suffered from planning deficiencies, procedural deviations, and an expedited schedule that could violate Florida’s competitive selection law.
But at Tuesday’s meeting, the administration refused to acknowledge that Hepburn and Wanda Paul were the architects of the now-justified emergency and insisted that rejecting the bid was the responsible corrective action.
District spokesman John Sullivan said the superintendent would “continue to review” the audit and determine “appropriate next steps,” adding that personnel issues would be addressed in the future.
The response did little to reassure board members and observers who noted that the same leaders who caused the problem are now seeking more time and discretion to resolve the issue.
Warning ignored – on record
The current crisis did not come out of nowhere.
As early as April, board members publicly warned Superintendent Hepburn and COO Wanda Paul that the district was on a dangerous schedule. Board chair Sarah Leonardi warned that if procurement levels off, the board could run out of options in January 2026.
Her concern was direct and obvious.
Wanda Paul dismissed the warning.
“Even if there was an outcry, I think there’s plenty of time,” Paul told the board in April, assuring the board that staff had learned from past mistakes and would do things differently.
This audit proved that assurance to be completely false.
Not only was there a lack of time, the administration failed to follow basic procurement procedures, ignored the Board’s directive to review RFQs before issuance, and even relied on “urgency” to justify circumventing evaluation safeguards.
Mr. Hepburn’s claim of non-involvement rings hollow.
Superintendent Hepburn has sought to distance herself from her most controversial decision, telling auditors she was “not involved” in instructing the Qualifications Selection and Evaluation Committee (QSEC) to waive marking and rankings.
But audits and schedules tell a different story.
Hepburn:
• Permitted publication of RFQ 26-059 without Board review despite explicit instructions to withdraw it.
• Oversaw a procurement that collapsed due to foreseeable legal and procedural deficiencies.
• Failure to intervene when QSEC was stripped of its statutory role.
• Urge the board to clean up the mess by rejecting the bid now and considering emergency measures.
Critics argue that leadership cannot be avoided simply by insisting on non-involvement after the consequences have occurred.
Wanda Paul’s Role: Pressure, Assurance, and a Broken Process
If Mr. Hepburn enabled the failure, the audit reveals that COO Wanda Paul drove it.
The auditor documented the following:
• Paul urged staff and attorneys to continue working with all three vendors, even though none of them met the financial requirements.
• Paul has been identified by the Assistant Attorney General as an administrator who wishes to proceed regardless.
• Paul oversaw a recruitment riddled with contradictions. 2 companies vs. “more than 2 companies”, CMA-OR vs. program management, financial standards that no one can justify;
• And while Paul repeatedly assured the board that the schedule was under control, those assurances have now been proven false.
When QSEC met on October 15, members were not given vendor materials and were presented with a pre-drafted motion to induce them to abandon the assessment altogether.
One of the motions cites “the school board administration’s desire” to negotiate with all three companies, tracing the auditor’s desire directly to Wanda Paul.
Now, they have been warned about the “emergency situation”
Ironically, the emergency that district attorneys warned about earlier this year and that Paul downplayed has come true.
AECOM’s contract expires on January 17, 2026. District attorneys previously told the board that extending contracts beyond that date is generally prohibited and carries legal risks.
Now that RFQ 26-059 is likely no longer valid, board member Allen Zeman said the district may have no choice but to declare an emergency and extend AECOM anyway. This is exactly what board members feared and leaders assured them would not happen.
“This is exactly what we said we didn’t want to be,” one board observer noted privately after Tuesday’s meeting.
Jacobs, Piggybacking, and Unanswered Questions
The audit and subsequent report also reignited deep-rooted concerns about Jacobs Engineering.
Earlier this year, Wanda Paul tried to piggyback on Duval County’s deal with Jacobs, but the board rejected it. Jacobs later resurfaced as one of only three proponents under RFQ 26-059.
This audit does not allege favoritism, but it does raise uncomfortable questions. Why were flawed processes repeatedly changed to keep all vendors alive without rebooting when requirements were not met? And why were competitive safeguards discarded rather than being enforced?
Those questions remain unanswered.
Bottom line: Responsibility is deferred, results are immediate.
One thing that was clear from Tuesday’s school board meeting was that the administration acknowledged a failure in the process.
What they haven’t acknowledged, at least not publicly, is who failed the process.
Superintendent Hepburn and Chief Operating Officer Wanda Paul ignored warnings, avoided oversight, ignored concerns, and pushed forward until the system collapsed. Now they are asking for flexibility, emergency powers and patience from boards.
The board must decide whether rejecting RFQ 26-059 is enough, or whether real accountability is needed before history repeats itself.
Because if the past decade has shown us anything, it’s this:
In Broward County, construction crises don’t happen by accident, they happen when leaders don’t listen.
