Paula Wallis, TunnelTalk

Revisions to the contract documents are causing postponement of the bid advertisement for the New Irvington Tunnel Project in the San Francisco Bay Area.

"We are incorporating constructability review comments to improve the bid documents before going out on the street," said David Tsztoo, Project Manager for the SFPUC. "We anticipate advertisement of the contract to go out in the last week of December 2009 or early January 2010."

Prequalification is required to submit a bid and prequalification packets are available for download from the SFPUC website.

Fig 1. WSIP program with New Irvington Tunnel identified

The tunnel will be excavated using conventional mining methods, including road-headers and controlled dills+blast in sections of hard rock. The finished tunnel will be horseshoe shaped and will have an internal diameter of approximately 8.5ft to 10.5ft(2.6-3.2m). The estimated construction cost is $250 million.

The New Irvington Tunnel is the third major tunneling contract in the SFPUC's $4.6 billion Water System Improvement Program (WSIP) to repair, replace, and seismically upgrade the Hetch Hetchy Water System's aging pipelines, reservoirs, and dams (Fig 1).

Last month Michels/ Jay Dee/Coluccio JV submitted the apparent lowest bid for the 5-mile(8km) long Bay Tunnel under the San Francisco Bay with a bid of $215.3 million, narrowly undercutting the Obayashi/Kenny JV's bid of $215.4 million.

Shank/Balfour Beatty JV is excavating the project's $55.7 million Crystal Springs Bypass Tunnel, on the San Francisco Peninsular. Tunneling operations began in October 2009.

Bids for the New Irvington tunnel contract are scheduled to be opened in late February or early March with a contract award in April 2010. Construction is expected to begin in May 2010 for final completion by January 2014.

References

Fierce competition creates slimmest of margins - TunnelTalk, Nov 2009
TBM launch at Crystal Springs (video) - TunnelCast, October 2009
Bay tunnel (video) - TunnelTalk, March 2008
Crystal Springs Tunnel awarded - TunnelTalk, October 2008

SFPUC