Pittsburgh, PA-based Dick Corp. was recently awarded the contract for road reconstruction on part of Route 30, Lancaster County, PA.

The firm was not the original low-bidder in late June when the bids were opened, however. The original bid winner was Iafrate Construction of Warren, MI. But, a careful review of the paperwork and math by officials of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) uncovered a clerical error on the part of Iafrate.

State officials discovered that Iafrate had apparently miscalculated the cost of steel reinforcing bars by $1.4 million. PennDOT announced that Iafrate’s bid totaled only $77.8 million, not the $79.4 million the company had originally presented. Iafrate said they could not do the job at that price and asked to be removed from the bidding process.

Dick Corp., with the second lowest bid of $87.4 million, was awarded the contract for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the eastern section of Route 30, between Routes 222 and 462.

The company is already slated to do the reconstruction on the western end of the Route 30 project. Dick Corp. won that contract with a bid of $45.7 million. Hempt Bros. Inc. of Camp Hill, PA, came in second with a bid of $50.6 million.

“We are looking forward to doing the work. It won’t be an easy job,” said Willie Heisey, Route 30 project manager for Dick Corp. He said there is a lot of traffic and limited right-of-ways.

Dick Corp. started the Route 30 West project this spring. That project is expected to continue through July 2002. Now, with this second winning bid, Dick Corp. will be working on both road sections for about two years.

“We will still treat them as separate projects, but we can share some resources when we have the opportunity,” said Heisey.

PennDOT Spokesman Mike Cruchonis said the bidding error was unfortunate, but had to be addressed.

“It is not something that happens a lot, especially with a large job like this,” he said. He said PennDOT does not allow companies vying for road jobs to change their bids.

“Legally, we just can’t do that,” said Cruchonis. “We would be leaving the door open for companies to come in and intentionally bid low and then change their bids after they got the job. That’s certainly not what happened here, but we can’t leave that door.”

But, it was not all a loss for Iafrate. The Michigan firm was the low bidder at $21.3 million for another PennDOT project — the reconstruction and relocation of roads, including SR 0015 and SR 2004 and SR 8047 in Cumberland and York Counties.

The big loser in the ongoing Route 30 construction is Balfour Beatty, the British construction firm doing the reconstruction of the center portion of Route 30. The company was recently barred from doing work with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for a minimum of three years because it did not “adequately address” various matters regarding its performance on the Route 30 project.

Balfour Beatty began work on the $83.8-million reconstruction in October 1996. The work was supposed to be completed by September 1999. The completion date has been pushed back twice and the work is not yet completed.

The state and Balfour Beatty recently reached an agreement in which PennDOT dropped its claim to more than $5 million in fines after Balfour Beatty put up a $6.6 million bond to cover any future delays.

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