New federal courthouse work stalls

Interior construction work on the new federal courthouse in Cape Girardeau has been halted as the rising cost of steel and other factors have put that part of the project about $4 million over budget.

Federal officials said the cost-control move could delay completion of the approximately 150,000-square-foot courthouse at Independence and Frederick streets by six months or more and push back occupancy of the building to September or October 2006.

The General Services Administration, which oversees federal construction work, will now try to bid out the interior work as a separate project to lower costs.

U.S. District Court clerk Jim Woodward in St. Louis said he and the court's federal judges are disappointed by the construction delay. "On the other hand," Woodward said Thursday, "no one wants this project to cost more than it has to."

The partial stop-work order comes on a project being built under a design-build process that federal officials touted as a way to speed up construction of the new courthouse. Under that arrangement, the GSA awarded a single contract for design and construction of the building.

But that process may have added to the construction budget problem since final interior plans for the structure were still being finalized after the construction contract was awarded.

Jim Ogden, deputy regional administrator for the GSA in Kansas City, said the agency would have had better cost calculations with a traditional process in which architectural plans are completed before the project is bid out for construction.

"It would have basically been more precise," he said. "It would have just taken longer."

The GSA office in Kansas City issued the partial stop-work order, effective Oct. 15, after general contractor PCL Construction of Denver indicated that the cost of interior construction work for federal offices and courtrooms could climb to about $13 million. That would put the price tag at about $4 million more than the government had budgeted, Ogden said.

Most of interior work hasn't gotten under way, but the GSA didn't want the contractor to start anything that might later have to be changed.

Design work, purchase of the land and construction combined are expected to total more than $55 million.

Construction costs alone are budgeted at $44 million, Ogden said Thursday. That includes $35 million for all site work and exterior construction as well as interior public spaces such as restrooms and the lobby and the building's mechanical systems, Ogden said.

The GSA had allocated $9 million for interior construction of courtrooms and offices for 12 agencies. But by late September, PCL reported that the interior construction costs would total about $13 million, including $1.9 million the contractor mistakenly had omitted from previous estimates.

Ogden blamed rising steel prices for adding to the cost of the project. The structure, which is designed to withstand major earthquakes and terrorist bomb attacks, has a large amount of steel beams, some of which are used in the interior construction.

Idled steel plants in the U.S. and increased demand for steel in China and India have made the building material more costly, he said.

After further discussions with the contractor, GSA concluded earlier this month that the general contractor couldn't reduce the costs to meet the construction budget under the existing contract.

Bidding out the interior work as a separate project may result in more competitive prices, which would bring the project back within budget, Ogden said.

He said the GSA will bid out the work next year. PCL likely will bid on it since the contractor already is handling the exterior construction, Ogden said.

Work will continue as scheduled on the building's exterior.

While Ogden estimates the interior work could be delayed by six months, the federal court's Woodward figures the delay will total eight or nine months.

The court clerk said the courtrooms and judicial offices are designed to government standards. Scaling back the interior spaces isn't an option for the court, he said.

"There are no spaces in the building that oversized," Woodward said. "We do not have a lot of fancy finishes in this building."

Officials held a groundbreaking ceremony last November, and full-scale construction work began in February.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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