Cedar Point sues rock work company for incomplete work on Shoot the Rapids

I wonder if it had anything to do with the ride not being completely done on time.

The article explicitly states that the lawsuit does not mention whether the delay had any impact on the completion of the ride.

From what I saw on opening weekend, I'm gonna guess that it did not.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

How about suing the ride manufactor or maybe the people that made the boats for the constant downtime and delay in opening since they are going after people for rock work. I mean cedar point is known more for its rides not themeing.

It's possible that a deal was worked out with the manufacturer. If the rock company would have paid up in accordance with their agreement they wouldn't be getting sued.

Even more likely that Cedar Point is still working with the manufacturer. What jive2 said; lawsuits are what you do when all other attempts at dispute resolution have failed.

Unless, of course, you are Q Funding II, but that's beside the point...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Everyone is missing the point here. How do you get half a million bucks for fake rocks? How much would they pay for real rocks?

Time and materials aren't cheap.

Real rocks are a lot more $ than you might think. Plus, you would never be able to create a "canyon" out of real rock. It would probably cost more than the ride itself.

The rock work on STR is rather extensive, to say the least. The rock work on the second drop alone is pretty impressive.

^agreed

My question is why did CF pay this company so much money up-front before any work was completed? Sure, you might give them a little to get started, but not 40% of the final price tag.

Let's take a typical scenario that I deal with as a contractor. Typically when the 25th of the month rolls around, I'm generating invoices for work completed that month. Then if I'm lucky, I'll get paid 60 days after that. If it's hospital work it's even longer. This means that for the first 3 months of a job, my costs are accumulating. This isn't usually a big deal because I have other jobs going at the same time that I do have money coming in for. Subcontractors are the true financiers of construction.

However, there are certain times when a project is so big, that it becomes one of the only things I'm working on and the up front financing of the project becomes difficult. Materials are typically about 1/3 of my costs and are usually delivered at the very beginning of the job. And my bills are due 30 days from delivery. If I have a 600K project going (a very big project for me), I may owe 200K in bills 60 days before my first payment comes in. It's situations like this where we have needed partial up front payment to even get materials delivered. Credit lines only go so far.

I'm not saying this is what happened here. But, it is one possibility. They may have said they needed up front payment to purchase the materials and then never actually purchased said materials.

Its not uncommon in construction contexts to pay a percentage of the total contract before the work is done. A lot of times its a percentage when the agreement is signed (say 10%), a percentage when work starts (say 30-40%) with the balance due when the job is completed or shortly thereafter. On big construction projects with multiple contractors/subs there is sometimes a holdback that continues to be withheld even after a given contractor's work is done until the entire project is completed. Paying some portion of the contract before completion allows the contractor to buy materials, commence work, etc.

GoBucks89 said:
sometimes a holdback that continues to be withheld even after a given contractor's work is done until the entire project is completed.

That's called retainage and it's typically 10%. We have it on 95% of our projects big and small.