Inspection costs increase for transportation center
Bob Hope Airport officials say they are grappling with higher than expected inspection costs tied to the construction of a new $112.6 million transportation center.
In March, Dan Feger, the airport’s executive director, had asked the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority for permission to tap roughly $1.4 million for change orders that included unforeseen field conditions and inspection services. Airport spokesman Victor Gill the money would come from a $5.4 million budget set aside for such changes.
The amount by which officials expect to exceed those original estimates won’t be known until a future meeting on the status of the project.
Still, Feger said, they know the cost will be higher “based on the amount of inspection work we have to provide to make sure that the contractor is putting all that complex work in according to planned specifications.”
Officials plan to provide a detailed presentation about the rising costs at a future meeting of the airport authority’s operations committee.
At the same time, the contractor is working to make up lost time on the project, which Feger said is about halfway complete.
“They’re actually making up for all the unknowns and all of the things they had to overcome when they’re working in the soil,” Feger said.
Gill said the new transit center, which is taking shape on the airport’s former parking Lot D, is being built on ground that is the former site of numerous construction projects.
“You just find things in the ground that you don’t know are there,” Gill said. What those surprises were would also be included in a more detailed meeting with the operations committee, he added.
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Follow Mark Kellam on Twitter: @LAMarkKellam.
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[FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the transit center is being built on a site that had not had any earlier construction. The opposite is true.]
