Supply chain delays locked up Harvard High locker delivery

Among the stories of local supply chain delays holding up a project, Jay Schaack’s could win a prize for the longest wait.

Lockers for the Harvard High School locker room renovation project were ordered in October 2021. They were set for an early February delivery, said Schaack, Lamp Construction Inc.’s project manager for the Harvard High renovation.

They are still waiting.

“We were trying to get it done for spring semester sports. We bid it out in plenty of time” to get the lockers installed for spring sports, said Ian Lamp, president of the Elgin-based construction company.

It wasn’t even a lack of steel or the proverbial “slow boat from China” that delayed the lockers, Lamp said. The manufacturer needed parts for its locker-shaping machinery. A company that was churning out 1,000 lockers a day was down to 50, Lamp said.

The latest update from the Georgia-based manufacturer is that the lockers will be on-site by Sept. 4 and installed by Sept. 5, seven months late, Schaack said. Classes at the high school start Aug. 17.

Even without the lockers installed, Harvard School District 50 hosted an open house and ribbon-cutting Tuesday to unveil the renovation. Now that there is a delivery date, Superintendent Corey Tafoya said he nixed plans to put the old lockers back in the boy’s and girl’s locker rooms until the new ones arrived.

Students already are using the new boy’s and girl’s locker rooms. Both have secured areas where athletes can store gear during and between games and the boy’s secure area is now filled with duffel bags of football equipment lined up where the lockers should be.

Barry Gurvey is the Harvard district’s new athletic director. It isn’t just lockers they are having a hard time getting, he said. New football helmets are back-ordered, as are volleyballs.

“We can’t get helmets because of supply chain and labor issues. We can’t get them reconditioned quick enough either,” Gurvey said. Football helmets are reconditioned every year and must be replaced, regardless of condition, after 10 years of use, he said.

Last spring, baseballs and softballs were hard to find because of supply chain delays, Gurvey said.

Supply chain problems go hand-in-hand with labor issues. Schools everywhere are in need of bus drivers, but referees and sports officials also are in demand.

“We are in a crisis” for referees, Gurvey said.

It was becoming more difficult to find referees before the pandemic hit, Gurvey said. Then when sport seasons ended – or never started – when COVID-19 closed down schools, referees retired or never returned when sports resumed.

Sports officials are paid, and the Illinois High School Association raised those rates, too. With 500 high schools across the state playing football every Friday night, they need 1,250 officials to run those games, he said.

While the pay for officials is not huge, it can pay for a family vacation every year, Gurvey said.

There were other unexpected equipment delays that prevented the renovation from fully opening sooner, said Alison Andrews of Wold Architects and Engineers. They had planned to get students in the new workout area last spring. But equipment – stationary bikes, rowing machines, weight benches and elliptical machines – also was back-ordered and arrived later than planned.

Supply chain delays – problems getting raw materials, manufactured parts and components – have become a common problem since early 2021, according to economists.

As people across the country spent their stimulus checks, manufacturers who had been working with a “just-in-time” manufacturing and delivery operation were faced with not having raw materials for the sudden demand. Ships backed up in U.S. harbors, waiting to unload on cramped docks.

Those delays are starting to clear out as ships are unloading.

Originally, Schaack said officials planned to finish the Harvard project – updating the locker rooms, adding training, team and therapy rooms – by a Feb. 14 completion date. They hoped last spring’s senior athletes would get a chance to use the updated locker room.

Still, he said, Harvard’s locker delay wasn’t as bad as some. Because it was a smaller order, they will get here as other districts wait.

Lamp Construction had other projects in McHenry County this year, including a secure entrance at McHenry East High School and the Cary Park District Aquatic Center. Both of those were done on time, Ian Lamp said.