School design, repairs could lead to lawsuit
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Two months after construction workers began making emergency repairs to newly renovated Stevens Elementary School, work is approaching completion.
But even as administrators and teachers prepare to move back in next month, the stage is being set for a legal battle between the Seattle School District and the building's architect and structural engineer.
Documents released by the school district to The Seattle Times portray a school design riddled with flaws numerous and serious enough to endanger children and adults in a severe earthquake.
The architect and engineer say their design was safe and that a district-commissioned review of the design was flawed.
The district informed Arai/Jackson Architects & Planners in March that the design review "raises serious questions about the fundamental integrity of the building and its ability to comply with numerous code requirements."
Since the School Board authorized repairs of up to $2.7 million in May, construction crews have torn off walls and ceilings to install stronger columns, beams and walls.
With the structural repairs nearly complete, workers are now replacing finish materials so administrators can beginning moving into the building in early August. Classroom furniture is already in place.
John Vacchiery, the school district's executive director of facilities development and construction, said repairs will be finished on schedule and within budget. Originally scheduled for completion last year, Stevens will open its doors to students Sept. 5.
School officials will seek to recover repair costs from Arai/Jackson and from subcontractor I.L. Gross Structural Engineers.
Doug Green, attorney for I.L. Gross, said the multimillion-dollar repair job is unnecessary. School officials, understandably eager to complete repairs before the start of the 2001-02 school year, relied on a consultant's flawed report, Green said.
Green said Portland-based consulting engineers Walker/DiLoreto/Younie didn't take into account "prevailing standards" for renovation projects and mistakenly applied 1997 building rules to a design approved under the 1994 building code.
"To our knowledge, there were no serious problems that needed to be dealt with," Green said. "I think what happened is this train left the station and couldn't be stopped."
Green agrees that at least one repair was needed. The $14 million modernization of the 1906 school was nearing completion late last summer when a beam in a new classroom wing of the school "deflected," or sagged, after a floor was laid on it. Columns were added on two stories to give the beam adequate support.
"No one was ever in any imminent danger," Green said. "We viewed it as an incident that was isolated, and it was not an indicator that there was a systemic problem. This was fixed during the construction of the building."
But the sagging beam made construction managers wonder if there might be other structural problems. The school district hired Walker/DiLoreto/Younie to examine about one-fourth of the architect's drawings.
The consultant reported numerous shortcomings, including overstressed walls, poor floor-to-wall connections, overloaded columns, columns that did not align with columns on other floors, and a missing column.
The Walker firm said a floor was inadequately anchored to the ground-floor masonry walls, raising the possibility that the two upper floors could slide off the walls in a moderate or severe earthquake.
Walker also said a good plan check by the city Department of Design, Construction and Land Use "should have exposed many of the deficiencies that we found."
DCLU spokesman Alan Justad said Friday he wasn't aware of Walker's criticism. When city staffers review architectural plans, they do "essentially a spot-check" for errors, and don't attempt to examine every aspect of the blueprints and engineers' calculations.
The city has focused more on fixing the building than on looking at what may have gone wrong in the Stevens design review, Justad said. "Our main emphasis now is to get the school open, respond to changes they felt they needed to make out there."
Based on the design review by Walker, school officials concluded major repairs were needed before the school could be occupied. Seattle-based engineering firm Chalker Putnam Collins & Scott was hired to do a more detailed analysis of the design and to determine what improvements were needed.
Chalker's detailed examination of the plans and the actual construction confirmed some of the problems listed by Walker, found that other alleged problems did not require repair and discovered problems not found by Walker, Vacchiery said.
Vacchiery declined to discuss the recent repairs in detail because of the likelihood of a legal battle involving the school district and the architect and original engineer.
Since May, crews from Baugh Construction have strengthened all three buildings at Stevens. The most extensive repairs have been in the new three-story classroom wing where the floor sagged.
Keith Ervin can be reached at 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com.