Oct 30, 2021 4 min read

The general contractor hired to build the new Peters Township High School is suing the school district claiming it ran into numerous unexpected issues during construction – including the coronavirus pandemic – and has yet to receive its full pay for the project.

The lawsuit filed Oct. 20 in Washington County Court by Carnegie-based Nello Construction Co. is demanding more than $7 million from the school district over contractually obligated payments and additional costs because of expedited construction following last year’s shutdown as COVID-19 spread across the region.

According to the lawsuit, Nello was awarded a $47.84 million contract from the school district in June 2018 and soon ran into site preparation problems around the new high school’s location on Rolling Hills Drive, which was formerly the site of Rolling Hills Country Club. Access roads to the construction site turned into several feet of mud during the winter, delaying many portions of the project. The lawsuit also outlines various other unforeseen problems that contractors discovered along the way.

But the largest problems occurred with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic early last year.

Following Gov. Tom Wolf’s shutdown orders in mid-March 2020, Nello requested a waiver to allow for a temporary pause on construction, but the district denied it, the lawsuit states. The district “insisted” construction continue despite the shutdown orders, but Nello decided instead to halt the work and secure the site. The lawsuit claims the district made incorrect statements to the media that there were “full crews” working on construction despite no workers being at the site, the lawsuit claims.

“This attitude was evident very early in the pandemic as, even after Peters Township School District closed its schools and fear began to grip the nation, the school district insisted that work continue at full speed,” the lawsuit states.

By early April, school construction projects were permitted to continue, but Nello and its subcontractors struggled to find workers with some of them being older or facing higher health risks from COVID-19, the lawsuit claims.

“The school district’s position of forcing work at ‘full speed’ through a pandemic constitutes active interference, was dangerous, and forced Nello to operate at a highly inefficient and costly manner,” the lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit states Nello suffered “extensive financial damages” by being required to work through the beginning of the pandemic. Construction on the new high school was mostly completed last winter so students could move into the classrooms in January after the holiday break, albeit one week behind the project’s planned finishing date. However, some areas of the building still remain unfinished.

“We only missed it by a week,” Nello’s attorney Dean Falavolito said in a phone interview Friday. “That’s insane we were able to pull that off in a pandemic.”

Falavolito said the contractor is still owed about $2 million the district is withholding through “retainage” because the high school is not considered completed. He noted students have been learning inside the high school since January, showing the project is largely finished because the building is now occupied. An additional $5 million is owed to Nello and its subcontractors for additional work “due to unexpected delays and unforeseen issues,” Falavolito said.

Jessica Quinn-Horgan, the outside counsel representing the school district in the lawsuit, called the allegations inaccurate. She said the district has paid Nello and its subcontractors for all the completed work and any funds currently being withheld are “for work items that are either incomplete or do not meet the contract specifications.”

“The district has and will continue to work diligently on behalf of community taxpayers to ensure that all work related to the new high school is done right and completed pursuant to the contract requirements,” Quinn-Horgan said in a written statement.

The new building, which opened Jan. 19 and cost an estimated $83.175 million, replaced the previous high school on East McMurray Road that opened in 1968.