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Proposed Plan Responds to Unfavorable Economic Conditions Impacting Bid Prices
Earlier this week, the Foothill Gold Line Construction Authority announced a six-month delay in award of the Glendora to Montclair Alignment Contract (RFP C2002) to allow time for environmental review of a proposed plan to shift the contract option within the Alignment Contract from Claremont to La Verne. No significant change to the scope of the project is contemplated at this time, although the need to secure additional funding in order to complete the project to Montclair is much greater.
The need for the proposed plan follows receipt of bids by the four teams competing for the design-build contract. All four bids reflected a significant unfavorable shift in market conditions since the agency completed the project estimate two years ago. When added with current unknowns and risk within the construction industry locally and nationally, these factors resulted in bids for the long-term construction project coming in hundreds of millions of dollars over the project estimate and secured funding available.
Shifting the contract option to La Verne would allow the Construction Authority to deliver the first eight miles of the 12.3-mile light rail extension in 2024 - two years ahead of the original schedule. If the Construction Authority is able to exercise the contract option by securing the additional funding necessary to complete the project to Montclair, completion to Montclair could occur between 2026 to 2028, depending on when the contract option is exercised.
Importantly, the proposed plan is subject to environmental review and could be delivered within the currently ongoing procurement. The proposed plan maintains the same scope of the project and merely shifts the contract option included in the Alignment Contract to La Verne; thus continuing to allow the project to Montclair to be delivered within the ongoing procurement if sufficient funding is secured. To that end, in the coming months the Construction Authority will be requesting revised bids from the teams within the Competitive Range (see announcement below) that separate the price to build the full project to Montclair, as well as a price to build the first eight miles to La Verne.
In order to conduct the necessary environmental review associated with the La Verne Station becoming a possible interim terminus if full funding is not secured in time to build to Montclair during this contract, it is expected that any award of the design-build contract would be delayed by six months, until July 2019 (see Procurement Update/Timeline for more information).
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