Contractor sues Sound Transit for additional light-rail money

Sound Transit has been sued by contractor Kiewit Pacific, which wants money to cover skyrocketing costs of steel, as well as delays caused by contaminated soil.

Kiewit is nearly done laying a mile of track and building a train-maintenance base in the Sodo area south of downtown Seattle.

Lawsuits are common on big public-works projects. This one is apparently the first by a major Sound Transit contractor.

Kiewit spokesman Kent Grisham said the firm wanted to avoid the courts but had no alternative when negotiations failed. The complaint, filed this week in King County Superior Court, does not say how much money is being sought.

When Kiewit won the two Sodo contracts in 2003, transit officials congratulated themselves because the $95 million bid total was 15 percent below estimates.

Later, Sound Transit increased its payments to Kiewit by $11 million. Some of that money was for disposal of tainted soils. But some was to upgrade the project — for instance, $2.7 million to add a station near Safeco Field, said Ahmad Fazel, Sound Transit's light-rail director.

Kiewit is seeking additional money, which Fazel said the transit agency doesn't owe.

"What we've told them is bottom line, this contract is fixed-bid, it's guaranteed," he said.

Fazel said negotiations will continue and that Kiewit's work is of good quality. The maintenance-base job is expected to miss its November completion date by five months, in part because the soil problem delayed foundation work.

Overall, the 14-mile train line from Westlake Center to Tukwila remains on course to open in 2009 within its budget of $2.4 billion, because of cushions that Sound Transit and the Federal Transit Administration included in the plan.

Mike Lindblom: 206-515-5631 or mlindblom@seattletimes.com