Justice Center Construction Delays Prompts Action By City

is unhappy with Orf Construction.

Nearly a year after the opened, the project remains unfinished. The parking lot is incomplete and landscaping still needs to be done. The delays by Orf Construction, combined with some unsatisfactory work, have caused the city of St. Peters to take action.

The city has issued a written notice to Orf Construction stating that Orf has not lived up to the contract. In the notice, City Engineer Liane Sargent writes that the Justice Center project is “substantially overdue.” Sargent also presents a list of other issues the city has with the project.

Because of the issues, the city of St. Peters is seeking to terminate its contract with Orf and withhold payment.

“We can’t get the parking lot done, we haven’t got the fence up and the landscaping around here hasn’t been done,” City Administrator William Charnisky said. “Those are the big issues they never completed, so those are the issues that we’re concerned with. There are also a lot of little issues here that need to be corrected. They had a whole punch-list of items that they haven’t addressed, and some of them are some costly items.”

The Justice Center opened for business in September 2010. Charnisky said the rest of the project should have been finished shortly after building was occupied. Instead, the parking lot remains unfinished and Charnisky has had trouble communicating with Orf.

The notice was sent to Orf on Aug. 3.

“Since we’ve done this, they’ve been out here and they’ve done a lot more work,” Charnisky said. “All of the sudden, they’ve shown up. But for a while there, they just weren’t coming to this job site.”

The Board of Aldermen signed off on the notice at Thursday’s meeting. By a 7-0 vote, Ward 1 Alderman Dave Thomas was absent, the Board passed a resolution stating the Board's apporval of the notice. Orf has a deadling deadline of 5 p.m. central daylight time on Aug. 23, 2011 to respond to the issue.

“We haven’t gotten a response back from them, so we didn’t have any other way of doing it except to say, ‘If we don’t get an answer from you—give us the schedule, give us the list … if you don’t give it to us, we’re just going to terminate the contract,” Charnisky said.

Along with the resolution, the Board of Aldermen also approved William Benesek as the new acting City Engineer. Sargent is out of the country and the city wanted someone in charge to handle this situation should Orf come calling. Sargent will resume her duties once she returns back to St. Peters.

The city is seeking a timeline from Orf spelling out when the project will be finished. Once that is ironed out, St. Peters also wants Orf to address some issues that have come up in the 11 months the building has been in use.

Marlite panels used throughout the building are being called defective. Sargent’s report said that the panels are “warped, buckled and contain gaps.” The city blames this issue on Orf’s “failure” to store the panels properly prior to installation.

“You can see the marlite on the walls is popping off,” Charnisky said. “They need to address it. The company says that they were stored improperly, so we have to get new marlite. Well, that could be as much as $400,000 for this whole building. (Orf) hasn’t addressed that. That needs to be fixed, so we’re holding that money, because if we have to fix it —we haven’t gotten any responses from them. They haven’t agreed to fix anything.”

Another issue deals with water in the basement and water infiltration within Masonry Walls. The notice says that the issues presented are not the only issues the city has with the building.

The goal of the notice is to either get Orf to finish the job and address the issues or to terminate the contract. If the contract gets terminated, the city has some options.

“There’s a performance bond on it, so we work with the bonding company,” Charnisky said. “The bonding company we work out, either they hire someone to finish it, or we finish it and they pay it or we work out some kind of agreement with them. If that doesn’t work, I guess we end up in court.”

Orf could choose to walk away from the deal and let the city terminate the contract. If they do that, however, they will lose a substantial chunk of money.

“We’re holding back a million dollars,” Charnisky said. “If they’re not going to do it, we’ll terminate the contract and finish this job ourselves.”

Charnisky said it could actually be cheaper for the city to do it in house, but the city would prefer Orf fulfills its contract.

The notice sent out by the city is just that, a notice, and not an actual termination. Orf still has until Aug. 23 to respond to the claims and work out something with the city.

“We haven’t broken the contract yet,” Charnisky said. “They have two weeks to respond and give us a schedule. If they don’t, enough is enough and that’s what I wanted the Board (resolution) to say. We’ve been talking to them for months and just haven’t got anywhere.”