Correction: Massman Construction Co., which was awarded the contract to replace the Broadway Bridge, will be charged $2,300 a day if it goes over the 2 1/2-year contract timeline for the project. Articles published Sept. 18 and Sept. 20 incorrectly stated the charge amount. Also, the November 2012 bid letting included the $78.8 million project to reconstruct a section of Interstate 540 in the Fort Smith area. An incorrect date for the I-540 project was included in an article Thursday about bids on the Broadway Bridge project in Little Rock. Also, a photo caption with the story incorrectly described the location of the expansion of Interstate 40. The $38.4 million project is to widen 5.1 miles of I-40 between Arkansas 365 at Morgan and Interstate 430 in North Little Rock.
The Broadway Bridge over the Arkansas River will be out of commission for no more than six months if the low bid to replace it -- submitted by a Kansas City, Mo., construction company -- is accepted.
Massman Construction Co. submitted a bid of $98.4 million, lower than the bids submitted by three other construction firms, all from out of state. State highway officials opened the bids Wednesday.
The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department said last week that the low bid was expected to exceed $80 million. That it did. If the bid stands after a review that likely won't be completed until early next week, it will be the largest the Highway Department has ever awarded.
Motorists who use the bridge every day and have been bracing for the span to be out of commission for at least 18 months might well not be upset over the extra cost.
"If the bid is accepted, six months will be a huge sigh of relief to everybody in central Arkansas," said Jim McKenzie, executive director for Metroplan, the region's long-range transportation planning agency.
The whole project will take 2½ years to complete, according to the bid documents Massman submitted.
"I'm definitely excited and hope the timeline of six months is true," said Frank Scott Jr., an Arkansas Highway Commission member from Little Rock. "Everyone is interested in seeing what's going to happen and seeing how it affects their lives."
The other bids ranged from $114.2 million to $115.4 million. The other participating bidders were Brasfield & Gorrie LLC of Birmingham, Ala.; Edward Kraemer & Sons Inc. of Plain, Wis.; and PCL Civil Constructors Inc. of Tampa, Fla.
In determining the lowest bid, the department used a formula that assigned values to the time the crossing would be closed to traffic and to the total length of the contract for each bid. The formula is standard in the industry, said Randy Ort, an agency spokesman.
In the case of Massman, under the formula, the 180 days the crossing would be closed was assigned a road-user value of $80,000 per day, or $14,400,000, which brought the amount for award consideration to $112,804,049. And, the contract length of 2½ years was assigned a road-user value of $23,000 per day. Those two road-user values bring the total project to $114.7 million. If the company goes past the 180-day limit, it will be charged $80,000 for every day it goes over. If it goes over the 2½ year contract limit, the company will be charged $23,000 for every day it goes over.
Highway Department Director Scott Bennett said if the company completes the work in less than the time bid, the company will receive bonuses based on the number of days left under the contract.
Massman not only submitted the apparent low bid, but none of the other companies that submitted bids could beat Massman on the length of time the Broadway Bridge would be closed to traffic. The other companies' estimates on how long the bridge would be closed ranged from 250 days to 350 days.
"It tells me they've got a lot of experience, and they found a way to do it quicker than what we thought could happen," Bennett said of Massman.
The department has said the existing bridge is safe despite its age -- it opened to traffic in 1923 -- but it has become increasingly costly to maintain. The agency notified local officials in January 2011 that the bridge would be replaced. At that time, the department estimated it would cost $58 million to build what it deems a safe, efficient and functional bridge.
Pulaski County has committed an additional $20 million to incorporate two basket-handle arches into the design instead of just one. That money will be paid over several years.
Bennett said he was pleased that the bid came in at less than $100 million.
"I think with the money we had available and knowing what we know about how complex that job is going to be, I hope we can get back and analyze the bids over the next couple days, and I hope this is one we can award," he said.
The apparent low bidder is a family-operated company that's more than 100 years old and is skilled in bridge and other heavy construction projects in and around waterways, with more than 1,600 completed, according to the company website at www.massman.net.
The company was on the team that built the U.S. 82 bridge over the Mississippi River near Lake Village. On its website, the company notes that the cable-stayed bridge is a "marvel of engineering as well as an aesthetic delight."
The bridge has a main span of 1,378 feet, which Massman said is one of the longest bridges of any type in North America.
Massman also participated in construction of the new $229 million Mississippi River crossing at St. Louis, which has a 1,500-foot main span.
It also is credited with building the Interstate 40 bridge over the Mississippi River at Memphis back in the 1960s, according to Ort. More recently, Massman crews have done some of the work retrofitting the bridge to withstand an earthquake, he said.
The company boasts not only of building big bridges but of building them fast.
It rebuilt the U.S. 90 Biloxi Bay Bridge that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The $338 million project included design and construction of new 1.6-mile twin structures over an active railroad track. The company also had to demolish and remove the old bay bridge, which was all done in 21 months.
No one at Massman was immediately available to discuss the Broadway Bridge project Wednesday, according to a woman who answered the phone at the company's Kansas City office.
Wednesday's bid letting at which apparent low bids of $231.5 million on 46 projects were opened was the agency's largest. The previous high for a bid letting -- $222.5 million -- was in November 2012.
Wednesday's bid letting included a $78.8 million project to reconstruct a section of Interstate 540 in the Fort Smith area, the largest single contract the department has awarded for a project, aside from the pending awarding of the Broadway Bridge project.
Wednesday's bid letting total would have been even larger except that opening bids on one of the largest projects -- rebuilding a 17.2-mile section of Interstate 40 in St. Francis County -- was delayed because of a paperwork error, department officials said.
Its price tag also is expected to exceed $80 million. The agency will hold a bid letting on that project within two weeks, the officials said.
The latest bid letting also included another project of significance to central Arkansas motorists. McGeorge Contracting Co. Inc. of Pine Bluff submitted a $38.4 million bid to widen 5.1 miles of Interstate 40 to six lanes from two lanes between Arkansas 365 at Morgan and Interstate 430 in North Little Rock, the last section of the interstate between North Little Rock and Conway that remains to be widened.
The project also will widen two ramps at the I-40/I-430 interchange.
A section on 09/18/2014