Fledging efforts to build a fiber network in Fort Bragg, California have seen some headwinds in the wake of the project’s original build partner being dismissed. The need to find a new vendor to help the city toward its goal has resulted in significantly higher costs and some notable delays, though city leaders say they’re still dedicated to guiding the project to completion.

The original plan to deploy affordable fiber broadband to the city of 7,000 was slated to cost somewhere around $14.7 million. When the city announced its plan to begin construction last year, that number jumped to $17.3 million. Recently issues have now increased the planned total cost for the project to $18.9 million.

Construction began last Spring, but it didn’t take long for the city to realize that the fiber deployment was going to exceed the city’s original projections.

“In July or June, it became obvious that the level of restoration in the streets was going to far exceed what we could afford,” City Economic Development Manager Sarah McCormick told the Fort Bragg City Council at a meeting back in January.

At the same time, the city's original build partner, construction management firm GHD, was dismissed by the city after it could not originally account for being over budget due to boring costs. GHD had been awarded a $1.4 million contract to oversee the project.

“We quickly terminated that part of the contract because that was his job — to track the project,” McCormick said.

Analysis later found that the higher costs were due to the late addition of telecom fiber flower pots – enclosures allowing for the core fiber trunk to be split off to serve individual locations and residences – something inexplicably omitted from the original design.

“When they made that change, they didn’t change the bill of materials for boring,” McCormick said. “That would have been like a real no-brainer thing to see if you were the construction manager and tracking the project.”

Navigating a New Path