— The planned-for roundabout at Stadium Road and Victory Drive will probably still be the area's first, but it will not be done today, as originally planned.

Instead of being finished in time for Minnesota State University's Monday start, the roundabout won't be finished for perhaps a month or more, Blue Earth County Engineer Al Forsberg said.

Three of the four legs will be open sooner -- perhaps in two or three weeks -- while east-west through traffic on Stadium Road will take a few weeks longer.

Forsberg said the contractor, Southern Minnesota Construction, has requested additional time based on unforeseen complications. He said this sort of request is typical; perhaps one in two projects doesn't finish on time. When that happens, the county and the contractor negotiate on a penalty.

In this case, Forsberg said the contractor had three explanations: a delay in receiving a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit, changes in required quantities of road materials and the addition of a short section of city water pipes.

Forsberg said there was indeed a short delay on the Corps permit, and the city request did come after SMC's $2.74 million bid was accepted.

Forsberg said it will be the county's position that these delays need not have pushed the whole project back, that there were other areas in which work could have been done. But, again, road delays aren't uncommon.

"When you do a road project a lot of things you can't anticipate in advance," he said.

And the quality of the project looks to be high, he said.

"That will be remembered long after whether they missed their completion date by a few weeks," he said.

The negotiations over delay fines is just that: The contractor argues it deserves a certain number of extra days, and the county tries to decide if the extra work ought to have taken that much time, Forsberg said. A fine is typically a compromise -- more than the contractor wants, but less than the county sought.  

One purpose of the fines is fairness for the contractors who didn't win the project. After all, each contractor bid on the same project on the same timetable, and it wouldn't be fair to the rest if the winning contractor weren't held to those rules.

An SMC official declined to discuss the delay over the phone Thursday.

In other road news, Madison Avenue (also called County Road 17) is slated to open next week while crews finish its intersection with County Road 12. Stop signs on County Road 12 will control the intersection this fall, though a roundabout is slated to go there next year.

The interchange at County Road 12 and Highway 14 is still on schedule to be finished later this fall.