The Pulaski County Commissioners have approved another pair of change orders for the Justice Center project. This time, workers encountered some unexpected underground obstacles, according to project liaison Nathan Origer.
“There’s just a wall under the street that they found,” Origer told the commissioners last week. “Nobody can really explain it, why it’s there, if it’s an old foundation or what, some old drainage tile, clay tile that they can’t remove all of but they can work around and some utility lines that weren’t on the maps that anyone had.”
The commissioners approved the added cost not to exceed $44,000.
The other change order for almost $8,500 would fix a preexisting issue of an air conditioning unit that isn’t level, along with duct insulation and weatherproofing. But Origer said that change order would only be used if the Maintenance Department doesn’t have the money in its regular budget. He said that going through the Maintenance Department would be a bit cheaper, since there wouldn’t be a fee to the project’s construction manager.
Even with the change orders, Origer said the project is still within the guaranteed maximum construction cost of about $4.5 million, since money was budgeted for contingencies. “There is room for that,” he explained. “It’s that once they get over that in original estimated cost and change orders that the company starts eating the losses.”
He noted that the county was able to avoid about $20,000 in cost increases by finding a temporary space for the Prosecutor’s Office at the Annex Building, rather than renting an office.
