RTD picks partnership for one phase of light rail

Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

The Regional Transportation District has selected a partnership of companies new to the region's transit system to lead development of the first new FasTracks light-rail line from Denver to Golden.

The RTD board on Tuesday approved a $1.2 million first-phase contract with Denver Transit Construction Group, a joint venture of Herzog Contracting of St. Joseph, Mo., and Stacey & Witbeck of Alameda, Calif.

The contract, for pre-construction services such as scheduling, planning and cost engineering and saving during the final design, will lead in two years to the group having the inside track for the full construction contract for the 12.1-mile West Corridor line.

FasTracks' first new corridor is supposed to open in 2013.

Herzog/Stacey & Witbeck have a number of local and small firms on their team. Companies in the group include Edward Kraemer & Sons, a Wisconsin firm with a Western regional office in Castle Rock; Lawrence Construction of Littleton; and Jackson Construction and Meza Construction, both of Denver.

In selecting the Herzog/Stacey & Witbeck team, RTD passed over two other proposals featuring companies that have built part of the existing light-rail system.

One group was led by Kiewit, which is the lead contractor on the $1.75 billion T-REX highway and transit project on Interstates 25 and 225, set to complete construction Sept. 1. The southeast light rail corridor Kiewit built is supposed to start service Nov. 17.

Also passed over was a partnership of PCL Construction and -SEMA. PCL built the light-rail system's southwest line to Littleton and the Central Platte Valley spur to Union Station.

The fourth proposal was from a team led by Flatiron Construction of Longmont and Fluor, a South Carolina company with offices in Aurora.

RTD is using a process called construction management-general contracting to build the line. This is different from the T-REX contract, in which RTD and the Colorado Department of Transportation hired a contractor to do both design and construction for a fixed price.

Liz Rao, RTD's director of planning and development, said this newer method would give RTD more opportunity for community involvement later into the process.

While Herzog/Stacey & Witbeck has the inside track for winning the larger construction contract in two years, RTD still has the option to reject that and put the final design out to bid from other companies at that time.