http://www.crainschicago.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=19840
City rejects bids for O'Hare runway construction
Action raises questions about whether airport upgrade is on schedule
The City of Chicago has rejected bids for construction of the first new runway in three decades at O’Hare International Airport, a step likely to raise new questions about whether the massive airport renovation project can be completed on time and on budget.
In an action announced midday Tuesday, officials said bids from three firms to pour concrete and do other work for the new Runway 9L/27R at O’Hare’s northern edge “exceeded the engineer’s estimate” and are not acceptable.
The runway job now will be re-advertised, but not until the first quarter of next year. That means the runway will not be completed until the end of 2008, according to the city’s O’Hare Modernization Program (OMP).
OMP officials said the end of 2008 is consistent with deadlines that were announced earlier. But in an interview last September, OMP Executive Director Rosemarie Andolino had said construction on the new runway would start this fall and be completed by the end of 2007.
The rejected bids came from three prominent firms in the building business: Walsh Construction Co., which bid $58.9 million; Kiewit-Western Co., $61.7 million; and Plote Construction, Inc., at $63.7 million, Ms. Andolino said in a phone interview. Ms. Andolino declined to say exactly how much above estimates those bids were, citing competitive reasons, but said the figures were “not way above our estimates, but above.”
Ms. Andolino said the construction schedule slipped from the original date of the end of 2007 not because of the construction bids but because of delays by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in approving OMP. The 2007 date originally was issued in 2001, when the city expected FAA approval in 2004, she said. In fact, FAA approval did not come until 2005.
The city will be able to meet the new 2008 schedule because of the recent installation of computer-assisted landing systems on two more of its runways, Ms. Andolino said. With four runways now so equipped, O’Hare will be able to operate more efficiently in poor-weather conditions and some construction work can be “resequenced” and performed more quickly, she said.
OMP overall is designed to remake O’Hare in the mold of the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport in Texas, giving the Chicago facility three pairs of parallel east-to-west runways. OMP officials say they can do that for about $7 billion, but outside critics have charged that the modernization and expansion will cost far more than the city says, and that related road improvements will add billions of dollars more to the tab.
The city late last year won federal approval to proceed with OMP. Since then, according to Ms. Andolino, the city and its contractors have proceeded with land acquisition, moved nearly 200,000 cubic yards of dirt in site preparation and even poured a bit of concrete needed to ready the field for larger-scale work.
The costs of the project will come from taxes and fees levied on airlines and their passengers. O’Hare’s major carriers so far have agreed to pay roughly the first half of the modernization program. City officials predict the carriers will sign on for the remainder once the first runways are completed and airlines save money from a field that is operating more efficiently.