MDTA awards $73M contract to design new Key Bridge

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Maryland transportation officials on Thursday approved a $73 million contract with one of the country’s largest construction companies to design the new Francis Scott Key Bridge, which will eventually replace the structure that collapsed five months ago.

The contract includes exclusive negotiating rights for construction for the selected team. It’s not yet clear how much construction will cost, but officials have estimated that the total cost to rebuild the bridge will be about $1.7 billion.

The company, Nebraska-based Kiewit Infrastructure, is also under contract with Amtrak to build the Frederick Douglass Tunnel, which will replace the Civil War-era Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, a deteriorating, chronic-delay-causing tunnel that spans 1.4 miles from Baltimore’s Penn Station to connect city commuters and travelers to Washington, D.C., and Virginia.

Of the three qualified companies that sought to rebuild the Key Bridge, Kiewit’s proposal was the most expensive, but transportation officials had said they would award a contract based on who they felt was most qualified for the job.

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“We were not looking at pricing as much as we were consideration of the qualifications of the proposers,” Jim Harkness, chief engineer for the Maryland Transportation Authority, said Thursday.

Harkness said the MDTA, an independent state agency responsible for the state’s eight toll facilities, including the Key Bridge, honed in on the experience of individuals who would comprise each proposers’ team, each companies’ performance on comparable projects and their process for estimating costs.

“We started this project with almost no design from which to start,” Harkness said. “We were then looking at, ‘how do they do with cost estimating?’ ‘What’s their model?’ It’s an open-book estimating that we’re looking for.”

Officials sought speed and experience in seeking bids from private companies to design and build the new bridge.

To expedite the rebuild, transportation officials turned to a progressive design-build process, in which the state awards an initial contract for both engineering and construction, potentially forgoing a competitive bidding process among builders with the hope that the initial team and the state will agree on a guaranteed maximum price before construction starts — about midway through the contract.

Harkness said the project design phase may take about a year. He expects that Kiewit and the state will have a better sense of what the construction costs will be in six or more months, when designing is about 50% to 60% completed.

Gov. Wes Moore’s administration and its allies on Capitol Hill have lobbied Congress to follow through on President Joe Biden’s commitment to pay the entire cost to rebuild the bridge, as opposed to the standard 90% for such projects.

They’re awaiting the fate of Biden’s $4 billion emergency funding request that includes covering the entire cost of clearing the Port of Baltimore‘s federal channel and rebuilding the bridge.

The state has also received $350 million through a Chubb insurance policy on the bridge, the proceeds of which will go to the federal government to help cover rebuild and recovery efforts.

Ongoing litigation will ultimately determine other assignments of liability in the bridge collapse, which could become one of the most expensive maritime disasters in U.S. history.

Impacted businesses have joined Baltimore’s mayor and city council in filing claims arguing the owner and manager of the Dali should have to pay damages. Underwood Energy, a Baltimore-based company that transports hazardous materials, filed a new claim Thursday based on revenue losses associated with the bridge collapse. Hazmat trucks are not allowed in two tunnels under the Baltimore harbor, so those vehicles “now must make a 30-mile detour to cross the Patapsco River,” the complaint says.

The Kiewit contractors are expected to first develop the project scope and requirements based on guidelines the MDTA has established, and it will have negotiating rights for the project’s second phase, including final design, engineering and construction.

The state will reserve the option to put construction out to bid if negotiators cannot reach an agreement with the design-build team on a guaranteed maximum price.

Kiewit was founded in 1884 to provide masonry services in Omaha, Nebraska, according to its website. Its notable past projects include the Fort McHenry Tunnel under Baltimore’s harbor, which opened in 1985. More drivers have been using the tunnel since the bridge collapse eliminated one of three water crossings that allowed them to bypass downtown Baltimore.

The two other Key Bridge rebuild proposals came from Flatiron Halmar Dragados Joint Venture and Maryland Key Connectors. Officials rejected a proposal from a fourth company, Archer Western/Taylor Brothers Joint Venture, for not complying with contract requirements.

Transportation officials have said they plan to open the new bridge to traffic by October 2028.

The Key Bridge collapsed in March after the massive Dali cargo ship lost power and collided with one of the structure’s main support pillars. The incident killed six men who were working construction on the bridge when it fell.

The new structure is supposed to be built within the collapsed bridge’s right-of-way and have the same four-lane capacity.

The bridge piers still standing over the Patapsco River are expected to be demolished in the fall.

The state is yet to decide what the new bridge will look like.

Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld has said that the new bridge would be a cable-stayed structure, featuring diagonal cables connecting to vertical towers to support the weight of the bridge deck, and with piers providing ships more room for error.

But MDTA officials have indicated that contracting engineers will have a say in what type of bridge eventually spans the Patapsco River and enters Baltimore’s skyline as a new but solemn fixture.

Associated Press reporter Lea Skene contributed to this article.