United Steel Inc., New England’s largest steelmaker, says it is close to completing a deal for what construction manager Whiting-Turner Contracting said was $757,000. The payment is for steel supplied to a US Navy shipyard infrastructure project in Kittery, Maine, beginning in 2023.
In its breach-of-contract lawsuit filed in federal court in Baltimore, United Steel accused Whiting-Turner of breaching its contract by withholding most of the money owed for a year. The lawsuit, filed in June, also accused Whiting-Turner of violating the federal prompt payment law.
The change orders had increased the Hartford, Connecticut-based manufacturer’s $7 million contract for structural steel and miscellaneous metals to $11.2 million on the shipyard project.
Whiting-Turner, working under a firm fixed-price modification to a previously awarded contract, repeatedly failed to pay the manufacturer’s requests for the money, United Steel claimed. Most unpaid invoices dated August 2023 or earlier. Of the $7 million, $435,000 involved change orders. “Whiting-Turner’s failure to timely process these change orders constitutes a material breach of the subcontract,” United Steel stated.
In August, United Steel struck a more optimistic note.
The company’s attorney, Gordon S. Woodward, asked the court for an extension of time for Whiting-Turner’s required response to the civil suit’s charges against her, which included violating federal prompt payment statutes. Another time extension request followed in September, from United Steel for Whiting-Turner.
Then, last month, Woodward said the two sides were still talking.
“The parties have conferred,” he told Judge Matthew J. Maddox in a letter in November, again asking the court to grant Whiting-Turner an extension to respond to the lawsuit until 31 January 2025″.
The parties, he wrote, “believe they are close to a final resolution” that could end the matter without further litigation.
