The delay of the roundabout construction from Sound Transit is due to the amount of work there was to do and an underestimation of how much needed to be done.
The groundwork and grading took longer than they expected because they had to level out the hill coming from Highway 99, and the construction workers ran into trouble because what they saw in a drawing was different from what they actually had to do.
Denys matsyuk/THUNDERWORD
Sound transit rail during construction.
“I think it just had the stack up of contractors. The number of people coming through just was not gonna happen with the scope of work that needed to happen over here on the north side versus our south side work,” said Barry Halldorf, Director of Facilities & Operations.
The construction over the summer, completing phase one and transitioning to phase two, was a lot of work for the construction workers who had to replace the storm pipes for new ones, install the pipes and prepare the new entrance of the main campus in order to transition to phase three.
There was a pipe that burst over the summer but the Sound Transit workers fixed it up right away. “They hit a pipe, but they fixed it really quick and it wasn’t a big line. It was like a two inch water line or something like that,” Holldorf said.
The main delay itself was because there was more work that needed to be done than what they expected since they started the contract.
Denys matsyuk/THUNDERWORD
Trees that were supposed to be planted have died due to the delay.
The only thing that both the campus directors (Zach Lambert and Barry Halldorf) and the construction workers of Sound Transit are waiting on is getting the temporary traffic light approved by the city of Des Moines, and that’ll take up to three months to order it, and six months to get the permanent one ordered.
In the meantime the new main entrance from Highway 99 to College Way will still be closed through November, though it should be operational by Dec. 3 or Dec. 4, depending on how much work the construction crew needs to finish.
When this project was started everyone knew that there would be a possibility that the deadlines may not be met on time. But now we’ll just need to trust in the process and with any luck the project will be finished soon and with no further complications.
