Record Rainfall Raises Spending To Keep Schools Construction On Schedule

The building projects are still on schedule, despite last year's record-breaking rainfall. The wet weather has made the going rough though, and the district has had to spend some of the projects' contingency funds.

To date, 40 percent of the contingency money set aside for the high school and 44 percent of the contingency for the middle school have been spent, said Bob Teitenberg with Turner Construction.

"We do get concerned when we use the contingency," said Westlake City Schools Superintendent Dan Keenan. "Some of these things are the reason you have a contingency... The big concern always with new builds is when you're working with the site work. That's when the expectation is that you'll make the great majority of changes because you don't know what's underground. We have our best reads, but when you get in there, it's not always as the drawings say."

The contingency for the high school project was set at 4 percent of the total project cost, and 3 percent for Lee Burneson Middle School. The entire first phase of construction has a budget of $84 million. The Ohio Schools Facility Commission recommends a 5 percent contingency for new buildings, and a 7 percent on renovations, Keenan said.

The project includes extensive renovation and rebuilding at , to be completed by fall of 2013.  will be renovated and expanded to become a fifth- and sixth-grade intermediate school.  The district is also constructing a new middle school for grades seven and eight near the existing middle school, which should be completed by next winter.

"This year has been absolutely ridiculous," Teitenberg said. "It's probably been the worst year I've seen for weather."

Workers have been doing weekend shifts and trying to work on small segments of ground at a time to keep underlying soil from the rain, according to Teitenberg.

Since crews , they have been getting the ground ready and laying the building pad for both the high school and middle school sites, and laying access roads. Crews have nearly completed the building pad a the middle school and are ready to start building. At the high school, about 75 percent of the pad is finished, Teitenberg said.

"For both sites, the majority of the spending has been because it's been so wet and they're trying to get a stable foundation," Keenan said. "We've added kiln dust, and did mucking. It was a very, very wet fall."

Teitenberg said that crews had planned on removing about 5,000 cubic yards of soil from the site, but ended up taking out about 11,000. Workers have also had to bring in more dry material than anticipated to combat the rain.

"We knew we had to take a lot more soil out of there than we first intended because of how wet it was," Keenan said. "We'll be able to use a portion of those soils and haul them off and use them in different areas... So we'll do some of that at . We would have liked to do some of that at and , the problem is that it takes a year to let those fields seed and mature before you can use them, and we're already using those fields temporarily."

The school district has also contacted the city to see if the soil can be used for other projects in town.

The schools' desgin consultants are working with contractors to find the best way to continue work, despite the bad weather.

The school board recently approved another $60,000 in contingency spending to remove debris left behind when the district moved the bus garage off of the site.

"There's steel and bricks and other material to get out of there," Keenan said. "We took all of the hazardous material like fuel tanks and that offsite right away, but they were able to save expense at the time and keep some debris there."

Keenan said the debris must be removed before building can continue there.