Design, construction deficiencies push courthouse opening back to spring

The new federal courthouse in Cape Girardeau won't be available for occupancy until spring because of numerous problems with the construction project, the General Services Administration said Friday.

The GSA said design, construction and "contract execution" deficiencies were uncovered during the agency's inspections of the new building.

The agency says an additional $2.2 million needs to be spent to fix the problems, bringing the total cost for the courthouse to $62 million.

"This project is giving us a black eye," said GSA regional administrator Brad Scott.

The money would come from unused funds originally allocated to other building projects, the GSA reported. But Scott said his agency can't spend that money without authorization from two congressional committees, one in the House and one in the Senate. He said he doesn't know how long it will take to get such legislative approval.

The delay is just the latest in a long series of problems that have pushed back completion and occupancy of the building, which was originally budgeted to cost $50 million. Earlier this year, the GSA had planned to start moving tenants in during June and have the building fully occupied this month.

U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson said in a written statement Friday she was disappointed by the construction deficiencies when GSA officials assured her in May that the building would be ready for occupancy by late summer.

"I'll be asking some tough questions of GSA officials in Kansas City and Washington, D.C., because these issues should not have taken anyone by surprise who was involved in the day-to-day operations of this important project," Emerson said.

U.S. Sen. Kit Bond voiced similar concerns.

The problems stem from defects and omissions in the original design documents, discovered only recently during inspections and reviews, federal officials said.

Among the problems found after the GSA declared the building "substantially complete" in May, inspectors discovered:

• Insufficient lighting and low-voltage lighting that takes a while to fully illuminate.
• Insufficient door locks associated with the prisoner movement security systems.
• Inefficient cooling systems in a computer room.
• An elevator that was damaged during construction.

Taxpayers will have to foot the bill for the repairs and changes at least initially, federal officials said. The agency, however, may later seek payments from contractors for any defective work.

"Due to the complex nature of this particular construction contract, it is not possible for GSA to assign the repair work needed under the scope of the existing contract," Scott said.

The final occupancy date will be set after the GSA finds the needed funds to make the repairs, the agency said. The move-in will occur about seven months after the added funding is secured, he said.

"Typically, when repair work is needed we can just ask the general contractor to fix it," Scott said in a prepared statement. "However, the repairs needed in this case happened in the gap between responsibilities of the first general contractor and the second contractor.

"Obviously we did not anticipate finding this many deficiencies during our final inspections; and while the problems are relatively minor, there are a number of them. We cannot open the courthouse until we are completely confident that it will meet the needs of the tenants."

About half of the $2.2 million is needed to address the deficiencies reported Friday. The rest of the money is needed to address other construction defects, including replacement of the roof on the 154,000-square-foot, four-story courthouse.

However, Scott said the roof, which doesn't meet GSA standards, doesn't need to be replaced until after the new courthouse opens.

"Our primary concern is finishing construction and getting the building fully secure and operational," Scott said.

The regional administrator said the project has had cost overruns and construction items have "fallen through the cracks" because of a change in contractors.

The GSA said the project, which began in 2002, suffered delays caused by design changes, the need to make structural steel changes in 2004 when steel prices rose, problems with bedrock conditions that forced additional foundation piers to be included, and separation of the contract into shell construction work and tenant finishing work.

Initially, a single general contractor was hired for both the exterior and the interior work. But that was later divided into two contracts. PCL of Denver was the main contractor for the exterior construction. Tarlton, a company based in St. Louis, was hired to do much of the interior work.

"As you can imagine, there are tens of thousands of things that must be done in the scope of work, and we simply missed some," Scott said.

GSA officials said the problem with the locking system centers on the electronics associated with managing the security system rather than individual locks.

"Was there human error involved? Yes," Scott said of all the problems.

But he insisted those problems will be forgotten once the courthouse opens.

"We design buildings to last 50 to 75 years. In a year's time, no one is going to remember cost overruns and delays," Scott said.

Southeast Missourian staff writer Rudi Keller contributed to this report.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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