Courtesy of Nancy Heise

Seward Ship's Drydock was only supposed to spend a few months fixing up the Tustumena ferry. Instead, it took them a year to finish extensive repairs on the 50-year-old vessel.

As KUCB's Lauren Rosenthal reports, the shipyard is now seeking millions of dollars in extra payment from the state of Alaska.

A few days before the Tustumena ferry finally returned to service in western Alaska, the shipyard that fixed it up filed a $4 million claim against the Alaska Marine Highway System. That's on top of the state’s original contract with Seward Ship's Drydock for $6.2 million.

Doug Karet is the construction attorney who helped put the claim together. He says there's a reason it's so large.

Karet: "The state added a significant amount of work to the contract that wasn't contemplated when Seward Ship's took on the job."

The shipyard didn't set up the scope of work on the construction project. Instead, the state of Alaska hired an outside firm to design it. According to the claim, the designer got help from three other consultants.

Karet says the plans they produced were garbled.

Karet: "The drawing and technical information that Seward Ship's received from the state and the state's designers to perform the work was both lacking in detail and lacking in accuracy."

The shipyard alleges that bad blueprints resulted in lots of changes to the project.

According to the claim, the State of Alaska granted 119 change orders. They included big projects installing new propulsion controls, upgrading computer systems, and replacing a large amount of steelwork on the ship’s hull.

When it came time to check that work, Karet, the lawyer, says inspectors used different standards for assessing quality than what the shipyard had agreed to.

For welding, Karet says, all the Coast Guard needed to do was perform a visual inspection.

Karet: "For reasons that are still a little bit unclear, the Coast Guard decided that it wanted to reinspect and actually X-ray some of the welds."

Based on their findings, the Coast Guard ordered the shipyard to tear out the welds on the new steelwork and replace them.

Karet: "And that cost them somewhere in the ballpark of $800,000."

Karet says it also took a lot of time. The shipyard did get two contract extensions, giving them 90 extra days to finish up their work.

They weren't going to be fully compensated for all of that time, though, and in the end, they blew those deadlines too.

According to their original contract, the state could withhold $20,000 from the shipyard for every day they were late, up to $600,000. Karet says the state is planning to withhold that payment. And as part of their claim, the shipyard's asking for it back.

Dana Burke is the attorney who’s handling the Tustumena case for the Alaska Marine Highway System.

He says he’s busy gathering documents and sharing files with Seward Ship’s attorneys. Once they’re done with that, Burke says the State of Alaska gets 90 days to respond.

And even though the state disputes the claims that Seward Ship’s Drydock is making, Burke says:

Burke: "That doesn’t mean it’s an irreconciliable claim and it doesn’t mean that we don’t look forward to working through the claim with the opposition. I look forward to doing that, and defending the case as necessary."

Speaking on behalf of the shipyard, Karet says he’s looking forward to resolving the claim.

The issue doesn’t have to go to court, he says, and Seward Ship’s is hoping to resolve the dispute before it gets that far.