PROVIDENCE — A federal grand jury is looking into the part of the state Department of Transportation that is responsible for construction materials, including testing concrete, a lawyer confirmed yesterday.

The DOT is already the subject of a federal administrative investigation that will cost the state more than $3.1 million in penalties.

Frederic A. Marzilli, a lawyer for the union representing employees in the DOT’s materials section, said that he and union officials know of one subpoena, issued to an engineer in that section. Marzilli said the investigation apparently concerns concrete.

The DOT’s practices for ensuring the quality of the concrete used in state highway and bridge projects already were investigated by the Federal Highway Administration. That agency concluded that the DOT did an inadequate job of testing — or failed to test at all — numerous batches of concrete that went into 74 structural elements of the state’s $610-million Route 195 relocation project.

Marzilli, who represents Local 400 of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, said union leaders were trying yesterday to understand the scope and direction of the grand jury investigation and were seeking meetings with top DOT officials and officials at the highway administration to learn how it affects the union’s members.

Governor Carcieri’s press secretary, Jeff Neal, said yesterday, “We are aware of the investigation. Unfortunately, we cannot comment further at this time.”

Carcieri had said last week that there has been no indication of wrongdoing associated with the testing failures, and that “people just weren’t doing their jobs.” If that’s the case, Marzilli said, it should be handled as a civil case, not a criminal one.

The materials section, part of the DOT’s construction-management apparatus, is responsible for the sampling, testing and acceptance of the numerous materials used in the DOT’s construction projects, from concrete to steel reinforcing to gravel and dirt for fill. The highway administration investigation focused on strength testing of concrete, where test cylinders are crushed to see whether they meet contract specifications. But it also found fault with other aspects of the DOT’s testing and quality control.

Marzilli said Haytham F. Awad, a principal civil engineer in the materials section, is the DOT worker who was subpoenaed. DOT spokeswoman Heidi Cote said that the agency knows of no other subpoenas.

Awad and his lawyer, Thomas B. Briody, declined to comment. However, being called to testify before a grand jury does not imply wrongdoing. In fact, the federal courts’ suggested instructions to members of a grand jury state that the person being investigated ordinarily does not appear before the grand jury.

Awad’s signature and initials appeared regularly in concrete test reports that The Journal reviewed last year from the DOT’s $130-million Route 403 bridge and highway project at Quonset Point in North Kingstown. The newspaper reported in October that the DOT had for four decades been building projects — including the Route 195 project — while ignoring its own rules for ensuring high-quality concrete.

When it penalized the state $3.1 million last month, the highway administration said it had found numerous problems, including some similar to what The Journal reported in October, in the Route 195 project records. A major highway administration finding, however, was that the DOT failed to test numerous batches of concrete for the Route 195 project.

Although Awad was involved in concrete testing, having signed numerous test reports on the Route 403 project, those reports and related documents also show that a number of other DOT officials were kept informed about the testing process. Officials well above Awad in the DOT hierarchy received copies of testing reports. They include Mark Felag, the engineer in charge of the materials section, and, one level above him, Frank Corrao III, deputy chief engineer and head of the DOT’s construction management section.

As the federal highway investigation came to light last week, the DOT said that Felag had been transferred from the materials section to the DOT’s research section. Felag and Corrao could not be reached yesterday.

blandis@projo.com