Cortez work delays raise questions

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, Sept. 1, 1998 | 10:45 a.m.

Clark County School District officials are investigating why laborers had to rush to complete important structural work at Cortez Elementary School just hours before the new building opened.

Welding and beam work that was left until the day before school started Aug. 24 forced officials to bus about 600 pupils to the Eldorado High School gym for the first day of classes.

"It was pointed out quite some time ago, and either the contractor dragged his feet or he refused to do it," said district construction-management director Fred Smith. "This was work that had been identified earlier and should have been corrected earlier."

Cortez, at 4245 E. Tonopah Ave., was one of eight new schools that opened Aug. 24. Workers under tight deadlines are still putting finishing touches on the buildings, such as wiring kitchens and erecting book shelves.

But officials say Cortez was the only school where laborers had not finished structural work by the first day of school.

Now school officials and project architect, JMA Architecture Studios, are trying to find out why, Smith said.

Officials say the work that delayed the school opening centered on three roof-mounted air-conditioning units. The units -- essentially big fans the size of small mobile homes -- sit in holes in the roofs, dipping below the roof line.

Project architects say the contractor, Richardson Construction Inc. of North Las Vegas, used cooling units that were bigger than expected.

The larger units interrupted the path of a special beam designed to reinforce the roof in the case of high winds or an earthquake.

Architect John Lopeman said school officials and architects had told Richardson as early as May that the 84-foot stretch of beam would have to be reconfigured to accommodate the cooling units.

But Richardson laid the roof over the beams, making changes difficult.

Richardson needed to complete the roof in order to stay on a tight, yearlong building schedule. Work inside the school continued, but the problem of the cooling units and beams wasn't resolved.

"It got down to crunch time," Lopeman said. "In the last month or so, we said, 'We still have structural deficiencies.' It's a lot of work to go back and redo. It takes a long time."

On Aug. 18, six days before school was supposed to start, Lopeman sent the district an official letter explaining that the problem still existed, Lopeman said.

"It came down to the last days, the 21st, the 22nd, and they (workers) hadn't started it," Lopeman said. "They thought we could open school without it. Finally, Sunday, they started."

Workers began tearing out pieces of the roof to get at the beams to reinforce them, Lopeman said.

Work continued until about 1:30 a.m. Monday.

That's when Clark County School District Police came by and told laborers on the roof to knock off work because it was disturbing neighbors.

"We just ran out of time," said Dave Condreay, project superintendent for Richardson Construction. "We were trying our best."

David Broxterman, administrative manager for the district's facilities department, had dispatched three inspectors to the school by 5 a.m. Monday.

Among them were two private building inspectors armed with equipment to make sonic and electro-magnetic tests of welds, Broxterman said.

"I said that I wanted to make sure that everything was 100 percent safe in that school," Broxterman said.

As expected, inspections revealed that the beam by the cooling units needed to be reinforced. Also, about 12 welds were needed along the length of the beam at connection points with other beams.

The school's start time quickly approached. Officials of all kinds were swarming the school, among them Superintendent Brian Cram.

Broxterman said school officials made the call to keep pupils out until the beam work was done.

"We knew we were going to get beat up for this," Broxterman said. "But the code says you can't occupy that building. We live by the code. It's black and white."

Students began arriving for school before 9 a.m., but were on eight buses bound for Eldorado within the hour.

"School was evacuated in 15 minutes or less," a district spokesman said.

At the high school, pupils ate lunch and spread out in the gymnasium, some coloring or working with blocks.

Meanwhile, workers made the welds at the connection points in about a half-hour.

But reinforcing the beams by welding steel plates over them took longer -- until about 6 p.m. At that point, the building was granted a temporary certificate of occupancy.

Students had been brought back to Cortez about 2:30 p.m. and were herded into the multi-purpose room in time for dismissal. The students were safe in the multipurpose room, far from the welding, officials said.

Officials emphasized that the unfinished beam work had posed a minute risk to students.

"The building was 99.9 percent safe," Lopeman said.

Broxterman said penalizing Richardson Construction for the delay would probably be more expensive than it's worth.

Lou Richardson of Richardson Construction said he was not sure exactly how the delay occurred, although he added that "some of it was probably an oversight."

"I'd have to take a look at the chronology of it in the paperwork and the records," Richardson said. "It was a team effort to get the thing opened. Something was found and we (Richardson, the architect and the school district) worked together to correct it. It wasn't a finger-pointing situation."

School has continued without major mishap since the first day of classes. Richardson officials said workers need just a few more weeks to complete the playground and add other finishing touches.

"It's beginning to look like Christmas around here," Principal Betty Roqueni, thrilled to have a new building, said last week.

Roqueni had been as surprised as pupils and teachers to learn that the building wasn't ready the first morning of school. But she said she wasn't angry about spending the day at Eldorado.

"They were just being safe," Roqueni said.