SAN BENITO — Questions surrounding building foundations have led San Benito school district officials to order a two-week shutdown of a $40 million bond-funded construction project as they study the matter.
On April 18, San Antonio-based contractor Davila Construction and McAllen-based ROFA Architects met to discuss whether geopiers, or deeply-anchored 2-foot-wide rock columns, are properly aligned with the foundations of a building to serve as a performing arts theater and a building to serve as an aquatics center.
“It’s a fact-finding mission,” Tommy Canul, a project executive with Davila Construction, said.
Earlier this month, district officials shut down construction to study questions of discrepancies between the project’s geopiers and the buildings’ foundations.
INSPECTING ‘LOAD-BEARING POINTS’
During a late February inspection, construction officials found a geopier to be “slightly off” its designed target, Tony Vargas, Davila Construction’s senior project manager, said during an interview.
“It’s not a minor issue, but it can be resolved,” he said.
Now, the construction team is planning to inspect geopiers located at “load-bearing points” beneath the buildings under construction, Vargas, who noted about 1,700 geopiers have been installed beneath each building’s foundation, said.
“There are a lot of ways to correct this. I think the foundation is structurally sound,” he said.
STUDYING DEGREE OF DISCREPANCIES
During a school board meeting last week, Mike Alex, an architect with ROFA Architects, told district officials he “observed” what he described as foundation issues as early as March 2022.
Then during February’s inspection, Alex and Davila Construction officials found some geopiers were not aligned with the foundation’s targets.
“There are a number of piers that are off their intended targets,” Alex told district officials during an April 12 board meeting. “Some may be within tolerances that would be fine, others may not be. We’re trying to figure out how pervasive the problem is — to what degree and scale it is.”
Alex told officials the geopiers are solidly installed.
“They’re buried 30 to 40 feet deep into the ground so they’re not going to move,” he said.
To correct any significant discrepancies in geopiers’ alignment in relation to the buildings’ foundations, Alex said officials could add geopiers.
During Alex’s presentation, Ivan Garcia, a civil surveyor with Edinburg-based Rio Delta Surveying, told district officials he’s studied a geopier located at a corner of the aquatics center building.
While the geopier showed a “discrepancy to the south” of 1.83 feet, its “discrepancy to the east” measured 1.72 feet, Garcia said.
SCHOOL BOARD ‘NEVER AWARE’
During discussion, school board member Rudy Corona told Alex the matter had not been reported to him.
“I appreciate you bringing this to light,” Corona told Alex. “However, for transparency, the board was never aware of it.”
In response, Alex said he didn’t know the reason the matter had not been reported to the school board.
“We’ve seen this. We’ve reported it,” Alex said. “I can’t tell you why it didn’t get to you all individually, but we’ve talked about it. The contractor has to know we’ve talked about it, and they’ve asked for some help to resolve a couple of them.”
During an interview April 18, Joseph Palacios, president of the Edinburg-based Brighton Group, the construction project’s former manager, said he had presented district officials with monthly reports, which included information regarding geopier discrepancies after their discovery in June 2022.
BACKGROUND
Since the past school board proposed a $40 million bond issue in 2018, the project has turned into one of city’s hottest political footballs, drawing fire from its opponents.
In 2019, the past school board, working with former Superintendent Nate Carman, awarded the Brighton Group a contract to serve as project manager months after 54 percent of voters passed the $40 million bond issue aimed at building a $21.3 million performing arts theater, an $8.8 million aquatics center and a $5.7 million in-door practice field.
Then in 2020, an election shifted the board’s balance of power, with its majority hiring Theresa Servellon to serve as superintendent last year.
In February, school board members voted to terminate the Brighton Group’s contract without cause, Palacios said in an earlier interview.
