Ball High School in Galveston, Texas has been building a new high school where the north wing is projected to be finished by 2025. As the construction goes on, inflation has significantly raised the prices of materials to build the school.

The school board for Ball High has instructed the contractors to reduce the cost by $25 million to get the budget back on track. Superintendent Matthew Neighbors claims that ” Costs for the north building, which is about 65 percent complete, are about $13 million higher than projected”.

The construction is not over budget, but the costs are higher than expected for the first two-thirds of the building, totaling $13 million. Costs of the south building are projected to be $15 million more than what was originally planned, unless design changes are made to lower costs.

The companies working on this project were instructed to make changes to as many things as possible to cut back on inflation costs. It is possible that the cost for the north building could be trimmed by $3 million, leaving the costs about $10 million more than expected. This leaves the south building needing a redesign to cut back to $15 million cheaper.

The firms working on this project will need to find at least $25 million from savings to get the project back on the estimated spending amount. Finding this extra money would come from cutting ack on certain design aspects, such as cutting the number of gyms from four, to three instead.

“The school board is working to combat inflation on the project and has directed the architects to come back with new designs to bring the south building project back in line with the original budget,” Neighbors said.