The White Salmon Valley School District's maintenance and transportation departments are hoping to move into their new headquarters on Bruin Country Road by the first week of August.
Superintendent Dale Palmer said last Friday the building can't be occupied before the project has reached "substantial completion."
Substantial completion for the project means paving around the main building and in the bus paddock area.
"Everything in the building has been inspected and approved (by the Klickitat County Building Department)," Palmer said. "It meets every code that we have to meet. All we need is pavement. Once that's done, we'll get a certificate of occupation from the county and move in."
Paving is being held up because those areas scheduled to be asphalted still are too wet. According to Palmer, a representative of the paving subcontractor, Mid-Columbia Asphalt, recently conducted a drive test on the grounds and found that water still was being pushed to the surface under load.
"His recommendation was that we hold off a few more weeks," Palmer said. "That's what I reported to the school board during our last meeting, and they decided that since we'd waited this long, why not wait a little longer so we get the best asphalt conditions possible."
While the grounds wait to be paved, work inside the building continues and will continue after the district's maintenance and transportation departments take up residence in August.
According to Palmer, the district is negotiating with the general contractor, Mathews Construction of Moses Lake, over the cost of "a couple of change orders and a couple of change directives."
A change order is a revision in the project, including the cost, that the contractee and contractor mutually agree to. A change directive is a revision requested by the contractee before a price has been fixed. The contractor performs the work, then submits a bill, which is subject to negotiation under terms of the contract.
"We're having some contract disagreements with our contractor, some differences in interpretation of the contract language, which are just part of the building project process," Palmer said. "We're trying to work things out."
He declined to disclose the cost of the change orders and change directives being discussed, but said, "in a project this size, we're not talking about a whole lot of money."
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