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Low Bid For New Bridge in Brooke County is $131M

CHARLESTON — Although more than $57 million separated the bids received for the new Ohio River bridge from Wellsburg to Brilliant, the apparent low bid came in just about where state officials expected it would.

The three bidders as of Tuesday’s bid deadline were Flatiron Constructors Inc., headquartered in Broomfield, Colo., at $131 million; American Bridge Co. of Coraopolis, Pa., at $133.4 million; and Walsh Construction Co. of Chicago at $188.1 million.

A mandatory pre-bid conference was held April 4 in Charleston. Estimates for the bridge topped $130 million.

Anticipated completion of the new span now is set for March 2021, according to bid documents. Bids were opened at the West Virginia Department of Transportation office Tuesday.

The bridge project has been more than 20 years in the making. Preliminary work on the bridge approaches started earlier this month as crews performed soil borings along W.Va. 2 between Wellsburg and Beech Bottom near the bridge construction site. It wasn’t known which of the three bidders had ordered the samples.

WVDOT will review the bid documents before choosing a builder for the bridge.

Mike Paprocki, executive director of the  Brooke-Hancock-Jefferson Metropolitan Planning Commission, which oversees and coordinates major transportation projects in the three-county region, said a bid award should come within a month or so.

Paprocki noted the bid includes right-of-way acquisition on the West Virginia side through the contractor. On the Ohio side, the Ohio Department of Transportation is following a more traditional route of state acquisition of right of way.

The bridge will be a West Virginia project, although both states have allocated money to the project. Ohio put the final piece of the funding puzzle in place with a January approval of $37 million. West Virginia is putting in about $93 million for the project. During the preliminary phases for the bridge, federal money was set aside for the project of about $18 million.

“This is a big-time milestone,” Paprocki said of the bid opening. “People often ask if they’d see the new bridge in their lifetime. I keep asking them if they plan on being around for just another five years.”

The project is using a design-build process in which the contractor also will design the span.

Paprocki said once a bid is approved, a project schedule will become clearer. He said WVDOT anticipates the project schedule could be completed by the end of September and heavy construction could begin in the spring.

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