OLYMPIA — State transportation officials may have to fracture a contract to mend the Hood Canal Bridge.
Stopping work on a graving yard to build 14 giant concrete pontoons to float the east end of the bridge may force them to alter their agreement with Kiewit-General Construction Co. of Poulsbo.
Kiewit holds the contract to build new concrete anchors and other floating bridge components at a 22.5-acre site on the Port Angeles waterfront.
Construction at the graving yard site — already slowed for 16 months by discovery of Klallam tribal ancestral burials in August 2003 — isn’t likely to resume soon, if at all.
The Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, citing what amounted to emotional exhaustion at unearthing its ancestors, has asked that the state find a new site for the pontoon project.
Kiewit’s on-site project managers, Steve Fisher and Dave Coulsey, have not answered repeated requests for their comments on the graving yard issue, but state Department of Transportation officials have painted three alternate scenarios for how the project might continue.
They outlined the choices Wednesday to Washington Transportation Commissioners.
Presenters included Doug MacDonald, state transportation secretary; Randall Hain, Olympic region administrator for Transportation; and John F. Conrad, assistant secretary for engineering and regional operations.
The three “Plan B options” they outlined were:
* Delete the anchor/pontoon requirement from the current contract with Kiewit-General.
Transportation officials then would seek competitive proposals to build the components elsewhere.
The new contractor would solve the problem of where to manufacture them and how to fit them with work that Kiewit has finished.
Drawbacks to this approach would be that incentives and liquidated damages for completing the project on time would be “”tricky” to set.
Also, few contractors would be able to tackle the project.
However, “the innovative skills of major contracting firms is appealing,” transportation commissioners were told.
* Find a new site.
Under this option, the state would seek new bids but would have to find a new construction site itself.
“WSDOT can lose this risk bet,” the presenters said, “as seen to be turning out in the case of the Port Angeles graving dock — about the worst imaginable ‘unforeseen site condition’ situation.”‘
Like Option 1, problems of “fit” might arise, and the alternative “is not as attractive in enlisting contractor innovation and entrepreneurship.”
* Renegotiate the existing contract with Kiewit-General.
This would call for a “cardinal change” to the contract, “a mutually agreed substitute course of action to provide the anchors/pontoons under a new plan” — and, presumably, at a new place.
Drawbacks would be losing competitive bids and “forgoing other contractors’ entrepreneurship.”
