In all of Chuck Soules’ engineering books, there’s not a single chapter on crossed fingers.

That’s too bad because the city’s public works director has his crossed a lot these days. As he begins to see reports of construction material costs increasing by 20 percent to 30 percent following Hurricane Katrina, hoping for good luck is about the only strategy left to bring several major city projects in on budget.

“It is making it pretty tough right now,” Soules said.

After analyzing recent bids that the Kansas Department of Transportation has awarded, Soules has been forced to increase cost estimates of two major city projects by about 30 percent to cover expected increases in construction materials. Soules has added about $900,000 to cost estimates to rebuild Kasold Drive from Bob Billings Parkway to 22nd Street. He’s also adding several hundred thousand dollars to the $3.5 million program to repave existing streets in the city.

In the city’s Utilities Department, post-Katrina spikes are even more painful. Chris Stewart, acting director of the department, has added $5 million to the cost of a project to expand the Clinton Water Treatment Plant this year. About $4 million of the increase is being attributed to higher material costs, while the remainder is due to changes in the plant’s design.

100 feet of downtown sidewalk: ,000 pre-Katrina, ,700 post-Katrina

Hungry contractors?

Soules began pulling his eraser out and changing estimates after seeing some of the bids KDOT had recently received in the area. A bid to rebuild a bridge over the Kansas Turnpike on Kasold Drive showed the price for 9-inch concrete pavement had more than doubled from its 2004 average. Prices for commercial grade asphalt also took a big jump, going from $39.50 per ton in 2004 to $63 per ton in the turnpike project. Prices for steel rods and other steel materials also increased by about 30 percent from 2004 prices.

Typically, annual construction cost increases for road projects are more in the 2 percent to 5 percent range, Soules said.

Soules knows those numbers won’t hold true this year, but he’s hoping there are some factors that will cause projects to increase less than the 30 percent he’s projected.

The No. 1 factor might be weather. A dry winter has allowed construction crews to work pretty much nonstop, which means they’ve already finished many of their projects.

“We think they’ll really be looking for some new jobs to keep them busy,” Soules said. “Hopefully that means they’ll be giving some really competitive bids. We hope they’re getting hungry.”

Kasold Drive and 15th Street: .5 million pre-Katrina, .4 million post-Katrina

Soules will begin to find out March 14. That’s when the city opens bids for both the Kasold Drive reconstruction project and its annual road repaving program. Soules said a good early sign was that about 15 companies have requested bid information on the Kasold project.

Schools OK

So far, the Lawrence school district has seen hungry contractors as they begin receiving bids on $54 million worth of school construction projects, said Tom Bracciano, the district supervisor overseeing the projects.

He said bids for expansions to Southwest Junior High, Central Junior High and West Junior High came in about $1 million under budget. Those projects totaled about $21 million.

Destruction from Hurricane Katrina.

But the district isn’t out of the woods yet. The largest single project – a $25 million rebuilding of South Junior High – hasn’t been bid yet.

“If South comes in like the last two bids have, we’ll be feeling real good,” Bracciano said.

He said he was cautiously optimistic South would be on budget, too. That’s because he thinks there aren’t a lot of new buildings being constructed yet in the Gulf Coast.

“It sounds like down in New Orleans they haven’t really settled on a plan of how to rebuild yet,” Bracciano said. “There is a lot of construction that hasn’t happened yet that a lot of people assumed was going to happen right away.”

The scenario has made for less stressful days for Bracciano.

“There was a time we were definitely worried that we would not make budget after we saw those hurricanes,” Bracciano said.

Contingency plans

Clinton reservoir water treatment plant: 0.16 million pre-Katrina, 3.2 million post-Katrina

School district officials were concerned enough about their budgets to start planning how to build the projects if their costs exceeded the $54 million approved by voters during the 2005 bond election.

Bracciano said the district had found an energy-savings provision in state law that would allow for the heating and cooling systems of each of the new buildings to be paid for out of a special school district fund over a period of many years, which would free up a few million dollars in bond money to be used for cost increases.

At City Hall, they’re also searching for a magic bullet, but haven’t found one yet. Soules said cutting back on the quality standards of the project to save money wasn’t a good option, so large increases meant other projects would have to be delayed – unless city commissioners choose to raise taxes or find other means to fund the projects.

“When I look at all the projects that still need to get done, and then I have to add 20 to 30 percent on to them, it makes it tough to figure out how we’re going to get it done,” Soules said. “I would like to be optimistic and say that prices will come back and start to stabilize. But it will still be some tough decisions that the city will have to make about what its priorities are.”