2nd lawsuit filed over road project
Kiewit Pacific Corp. has filed a lawsuit against the state Department of Transportation to prevent the agency from awarding a contract for the northbound pioneer road, state officials confirmed Wednesday.
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"The lawsuit is asking the court to prevent us from awarding the bid until the protest is resolved," said Mary Siroky, spokeswoman for the department.
"What we've done is we've gone back to the court and filed an opposition saying that we did properly award the contract and deny the request for the stay."
Kiewit's Alaska Manager Shawn Lannen said he was unaware of the lawsuit, but did confirm that a protest had been filed.
"I guess we felt that they awarded the project other than how their bid documents read," he said. "They are awarding a contract to somebody who we do not believe is the low bidder."
The dispute is legally complicated.
No contract has been awarded, but an "intent to award" a contract was issued, telling the parties involved that a company - or in this case, the state - plans to award to the current low bidder.
The state maintains that would be Southeast Road Builders, a Haines-based company.
On Nov. 22, the first bids showed that Kiewit and Southeast Road Builders submitted offers nearly double the $30 million allocated for the project. Kiewit was the lower bidder at the time.
The state then scaled back the project and called for rebids, which were opened Nov. 24.
The second time around, Southeast Road Builders' bid was lower, although both companies were roughly $2 million over the $30 million mark.
An intent to award a contract was issued to Southeast Road Builders because its revised base estimate was $18.6 million. Kiewit's revised base bid was $23.9 million, Siroky said.
The base bids included the cost of the project minus an alternative stretch of road that would extend roughly eight miles from the Jualin Mine access road to Sweeney Creek. The extra eight miles wasn't considered a necessity, Siroky said.
Lannen would not give details on why Kiewit thinks it is still the lower bidder.
There is "a bunch of stuff still going on," he said.
However, Lannen said he had never seen a bidding process quite like this one.
"Until we hear something different from the courts, we will go forward," Siroky said. "We believe that we followed our procedures correctly. The state regulations allow us to award our contract even when there is a protest."
After the contract is officially awarded, there will be a 10-day appeal period.
It was the second lawsuit associated with the Juneau Road Access project.
On Aug. 16, a suit was filed in federal court against the Federal Highway Administration and the U.S. Forest Service by six organizations: Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, Skagway Marine Access Committee, Lynn Canal Conservation, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Alaska Public Interest Research Group. The state was later added as a defendant.
The conservation groups contend that the state and federal governments failed to consider alternative ways of improving access to Juneau, and that a decision to allow the project to continue was based on flawed data about the effects of the road on Berners Bay and Lynn Canal wildlife.
• Brittany Retherford can be reached at brittany.retherford@juneauempire.com.