MANKATO — Despite delays during the project, Scott Hogen is completely confident the renovation at Mankato West High School will be wrapped up by the start of next school year.
“We will have the secure entrance in the classroom areas completed by then, the gym should be done, locker rooms should be done, so yeah, we should be able to occupy the new spaces come fall,” said Hogen, the bond construction manager for West.
That confidence comes in the face of another update: The project is now six weeks behind.
“It was rain earlier this summer, and in the spring (that put us behind). … We had to deal with pumping water off the site, so that the contractors could work, which added to the delay of our construction,” he said.
The contractors at Mankato West, Kraus-Anderson, maintain a construction update page. However, it isn’t necessarily accurate. The page said on Friday that only eight days had been lost to weather. The discrepancy is due to two factors. First, the page is only updated on a monthly basis. Second, there has been some time lost to non-weather related issues — specifically there were some utilities, including a water main, that contractors were not aware existed and had to be rerouted.
With delays pushing everyone back, Hogen said crews are working around the clock to get back on track.
“We are trying to make up time wherever we can … Our electricians have begun some of the earlier work that would have happened in February … (and) our mechanical plumbing folks are working on some mechanical areas that weren’t scheduled to be worked on until this winter. So, you know, everybody’s trying to pick up some extra time here right now this fall and get us ahead that way.”
The delay is just the latest in a trend of the project falling more behind. In July, Hogen said the project was “about 15 days behind.” Then, in August as school began, he noted the project was “three to four weeks behind,” and now that number has grown to six weeks.
Even with those delays, Hogen said there would have to be much more significant delays to push the overall completion date past the start of the 2026-27 school year, saying it would take “at least a month” of extra delays.
Right now, he said the contractors are getting ready to lay the blocks for the planned secure entrance at the front of the building. With snow and colder weather around the corner, Hogen said he still plans on getting all exterior work finished by the time work is forced indoors.
As the project begins to gear up for its winter phase, with all the delays that have already happened, Hogen is hoping for the same things many people are this time of year, in order to get everything done.
“Hopefully it’ll be a mild winter.”