Wood County BOE questions construction change order

PARKERSBURG -- The Wood County Board of Education tabled approval of a construction change order Tuesday, saying officials needed to better account for a $37,000 charge due to "70 days" of work delays.

The $66,350 change order from Swope Construction for work at Williamstown Middle/High School included a line for "general conditions for delays," citing 70 days of delays as the cause of the $37,000 increase.

A paragraph description from architectural and engineering firm ZMM included in the document said Swope crews "were delayed by Mon Power and the delays affected their ability to do the work." The description said relocation of power poles and installation of insulated line jackets "resulted in critical path items on the construction schedule to be impacted."

Board members said the explanation was insufficient and questioned how the "70 days" number was calculated.

"I, one, would like to know where that is coming from, and two, were they delayed that many days?" said board member Justin Raber. "I'm not happy with that."

Superintendent Will Hosaflook agreed the provided explanation was not sufficient.

"To be prudent and to protect taxpayer resources, we need to ask for more data on the 70 days. We need to see exactly how they were delayed 70 days," he said.

Hosaflook said project manager ZMM was responsible for reviewing all change orders and their reasons prior to submitting them to the board for approval.

"I'm sure they did," Hosaflook said. "I'm sure they did a great job."

Hosaflook asked for the line item to be pulled from the change order, but board members pointed out another error listing a $5,400 change as a $54,000 change. Though the totals on the change order reflected the correct amount, board members said they were uncomfortable approving anything with a known error.

"This whole thing needs to be correct," Raber said. "There is no reason why when this was signed by the project manager on May 7 this was not correct and information was not provided."

Hosaflook said the error had been caught, but the corrected document was not posted on the website prior to the meeting. Even so, Hosaflook agreed to pull the entire change order and to bring it back to the board for consideration at its next meeting.

Raber said he was unhappy with some of the decisions and steps taken by ZMM during the project. The engineering and architectural firm is overseeing all of the construction projects under the district's $41 million facilities bond call.

"I've noticed this as we're dealing with ZMM these kinds of things that we're questioning," he said. "I made comments a few months ago, and in my opinion we're still (dealing) with smoke and mirrors with ZMM. I'm very displeased."

Representatives of ZMM were not present at Tuesday's meeting, but traditionally come before the board each month to update members on construction projects.

Michael Erb can be reached at merb@newsandsentinel.com.