Building stuff is hard.  Try finding someone who actually does what he says he’s going to do, does it well and does it for the price agreed upon.  Anyone who has endured construction knows the story, but you would think that the problems faced by mere mortals wouldn’t be shared by the chosen Nine.  You would, however, be wrong.

Via Tony Mauro :

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was making a presentation to foreign dignitaries at the court a few years ago when the sound of a hammer drill erupted nearby.

In 2006, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. was in the midst of a filming session when a noisy construction worker interrupted.

Vignettes like these from the long-running $75 million renovation of the court’s majestic building in Washington are central to a sharp dispute that has broken out between the construction company doing the work and the government agency overseeing the project.

Renovating the Supreme Court brings a somewhat unique problem to the fore.  How, exactly, does a contractor make his case when the witnesses against him are the justices?

And yet, this hasn’t stopped the contractor, Grunley Construction, from pointing the finger at the justices and blaming them for $40 million in overuns and delays.  The reason?

But the court placed one major condition on the project: The justices and court staff would stay in the building. Even the government acknowledged in a brief that the continued occupation of the building was “the critical factor giving rise to this dispute.”

At the outset, Grunley, which has participated in many major government renovation projects, pledged “zero tolerance” for interruption of the court’s activities. The company prides itself on “stealth contracting.” One project document stated, “The Grunley project motto will be, ‘No interruption to the court.’??”

That, apparently, didn’t give mean that they couldn’t do work during oral argument.  The original contract provided that the contractor should anticipate that work would be interrupted for 16 days during the calendar year.  But once Grunley got rolling, the special sense of entitlement that comes with a hard hat kicked in.

In another incident in 2006, Grunley workers were found using a hammer drill and pouring concrete while the court was in session.

“When questioned, Grunley’s superintendent was not even aware that it was a court day,” according to a report from the Architect of the Capitol.

The Court Marshall, Pamela Talkin, started issuing memos about when work could not be done, and anyone familiar with the words “change order” knows that such a memo can only lead to one thing: More Money.

The idea that a contractor could unwittingly shut down the function of a branch of government like they do a public road when their big truck needs it more than the rest of the driving public seems almost comical.  They aren’t doing a kitchen reno on a split level, where Mom can scoot out to McD’s if the stove doesn’t get installed on time. 

On the other hand, the building was in desperate need of repair, and construction work requires that you let the contractor do his job.  It gets loud and ugly before it gets better.  That’s the nature of the work, and it doesn’t change because the locals wear black robes.

For those who wonder whether the isolated, sanitized existence of a Supreme Court Justice interferes with his or her ability to understand and appreciate what us groundlings go through in our mundane lives, at least we can take comfort in one thing.  They know what it’s like to live through construction.

Still, the question remains whether an originalists’ view of the Supreme Court renovations would compel the conclusion that the Grunley crew be paid for the time lost while the court droned on, or flogged in the public square for their inability to grasp that the public welfare comes before trapezoidal windows.