$463k more from contingency: Justice Center change order adds 8 days

Teton County is poised to spend another $462,962 out of the Justice Center project’s owners’ contingency via Change Order OCO-004R1—and accept an 8-working-day schedule hit—after the design package moved from the 90% bid set to the final 100% construction documents. Details are in the county’s agenda packet: Justice Center Change Order 4 Agenda Packet.

Staff frames this as “design completion,” not scope creep: the team says it pared an initial $815,811 proposal down to items “mandatory for system performance, utility requirements, and safety.” The staff report highlights three drivers: roughly $200,000 for Lower Valley Energy primary power routing (more trenching/conduit), about $40,000 for Town of Jackson site coordination (curb/paving), and about $100,000 to enlarge rooftop HVAC access platforms for code-compliant maintenance.

The packet also shows how messy “finalizing” can get in the weeds: electrical work (Greiner) at $271,523, concrete foundation revisions (DPR Concrete) at $254,784, drywall changes, small adds/credits across trades, plus contractor markups and insurance/bonding to land at the $462,962 total. Bottom line for taxpayers: contingency is doing what it’s supposed to do—but every time the project burns another half‑million on bid-to-final reconciliation, it’s worth asking why the 90% set was still carrying this much unresolved risk when it went out the door.