By Peter Rathmell
The new $13.5 million Waddell Elementary School, which has been under construction for about two years, is going to take even longer than expected, Lexington City Schools Superintendent Scott Jeffries said in a school board meeting March 14.
Originally estimated to be completed by May 19, the project is now scheduled to be finished around the end of August. For each day construction continues beyond May 19, Nielsen Builders Inc. will be penalized $1,000. Nielsen’s project manager, T.J. Burkholder, was unavailable for comment.
If the delay is accurate, Jeffries said that the school could receive as much as $60,000 in damages. Although the school division would not keep all of this money, some of it would go to renting temporary classrooms for the students.
For the past two years, the elementary school has been housed in two modular buildings on Lylburn Downing Middle School’s campus. Combined, the buildings cost the division about $12,000 each month and are leased through June. They would need to be leased an extra two months under the revised schedule.
“If you take a month’s worth of liquidated damages to the tune of $30,000, you pull out $12,000 of that and you still have an $18,000 credit. So the cost to cover those modulars is covered and then some,” said Jeffries.
Jeffries said that the delay boils down to several simple factors: a few poor quality contractors, unrealistic expectations for the foundation and bad weather.
Jeffries also said that huge frustration came early on in the project when the building’s anchor bolts failed a safety inspection by a third party inspection company.
“There was about a week and a half, two weeks, where the inspections had to go on for those anchor bolts before the project could move forward,” said Jeffries.
The contractor responsible for the anchor bolts was immediately dismissed, said Jeffries.
Even before the anchor bolts issue arose, Jeffries said the project was already behind because the building’s foundation was far rockier than architects had anticipated. Before the project could even get off the ground, workers had to rebuild the foundation to support the new school.
“They call it Rockbridge County for a reason and we found out real quick,” said Jeffries.
Compounding these issues, Nielsen’s enlisted masonry contractor went bankrupt in early March. According to a story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Manning Mason pleaded guilty for failing to turn over as much as $800,000 in taxes to the IRS. For a week or so, says Jeffries, there was no progress made. A new masonry company has since been contracted.
Not all of the delays, however, were under Nielsen’s control. Jeffries says that the winter weather, which produced above average snowfall and more rainy days than architects had projected, severely contributed to the project’s delay.
“There is going to be, I would say, at most 10 days added on to that contract for inclement weather days where no work was completed,” said Jeffries.
Inclement weather days are added to the completion date based off of a four-day workweek, meaning that an extra 10 days would project completion on June 7. After that, all seven days a week are penalized.
“Think about it, when you take possession of a house or an apartment, you don’t live there just five days a week. You take it and you have control for seven days. So liquidated damages count Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, it doesn’t matter. The clock is ticking, day by day by day,” said Jeffries.
Although it is disappointing not to finish on time, Jeffries stresses that building the school correctly is the division’s highest priority.
“We want to make sure that we don’t sacrifice quality for the sake of getting in there earlier,” said Jeffries.
Jeffries is not ruling out the possibility of the building being completed earlier, but he is working to provide a realistic calendar and maintain open communication with students, faculty and parents.
“It will all be worth it because we have to remember that we are getting into a state-of-the-art facility, a beautiful building, a facility that our students and staff and community most definitely deserve; we just have to wait a little bit longer for it,” said Jeffries.
The Lexington City School board hopes to move the students into the new building over Labor Day weekend this fall.