How can a street construction project be completed six months late and still be right on schedule?

That’s the riddle of the project at Sixth Street and Kasold Drive which has kept Sixth Street from east of Lawrence Avenue to Monterey Way in some state of disrepair for more than nine months. The project was scheduled for completion by the end of 2003, but that didn’t happen. The latest estimate on when the project will be finished is mid-June.

Motorists are angry, business owners in the area are even angrier, but the contractor has no reason to worry. The project, he said, is on schedule to be completed within the number of “working days” called for in the contract.

“Working days” apparently are loosely defined and open to interpretation by the City Hall employees who set the standards. Non-working days include weekends, holidays, bad weather days and any other day during which conditions prevent work on a project.

Work on Sixth Street began Aug. 11, 2003; the contract allowed for 90 working days. That was about 290 calendar days ago, and yet the contractor, as of the end of last week, had used only 79 “working days” on the project and had 11 left.

OK, things can happen, but the weather since last August has not been particularly adverse by Kansas standards. Working days also are waived for delays caused by inaccurate plans or the unexpected need to move underground utility lines, both of which happened with this project. It seems that some of these problems could have been avoided by better prep work by local officials, but the way contracts are written also provides no incentive for contractors to quickly overcome those obstacles and get a project back on schedule.

Because Sixth Street is part of U.S. Highway 40, this is a state contract with LRM Industries of Lawrence, but city officials make the call on what counts as a “working day.” The city’s leniency on this standard could offer clues as to why so few street projects in Lawrence are completed within a reasonable time. The 1999 sewer project in downtown Lawrence was a nightmare, and complaints also are surfacing about work on the new roundabout at 19th Street and Barker Avenue (although it should be noted that those contractors are considerably ahead of the Sixth Street crew, having utilized 39 working days in the 68 calendar days since work began March 15).

With this in mind, Lawrence city commissioners plan to consider a policy that would set stricter deadlines for street projects, along with bonuses for early completion and penalties for being late. This is a not a novel approach. Many other cities already do it, according to LRM President Steve Glass, especially on big projects. People who have been around Lawrence awhile will remember the negotiations concerning how much penalty the contractors for the Massachusetts and Vermont street spans over the Kansas River would pay because they failed to complete the project on time.

A reward-penalty clause in construction contracts isn’t unreasonable; it’s simply an incentive for contractors to do what they said they would do. The rewards and penalties should be high enough to make it worthwhile for a contractor to work longer days or on the weekends to finish a project on time.

More water line work is scheduled this summer on 10th, 11th and Vermont streets, disrupting access to some downtown businesses. Interestingly, that contract calls for all of the work to be done from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Weekends are busy in downtown Lawrence, but couldn’t workers take advantage of evening daylight hours to work longer days and get the project done sooner?

Extended street construction is an inconvenience for motorists and a costly impediment to businesses whose profits suffer when access is limited. It’s not fair for local business people to have to shoulder this burden because city officials aren’t willing to set and enforce appropriate construction deadlines and penalties.