The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is moving forward with water and ecosystem civil works projects in its Great Lakes and Ohio River Division, with $17.1 billion in Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding. It recently named seven architecture and engineering firms and groups for multiple-award task-order A-E service contracts. Each project has a construction value of up to $200 million.
Design services for the five-year contract term are for construction or renovation of dams, levees, pump stations, canals and other infrastructure, as well as for ecosystem restoration, according to the Corps.
Records show the awardees include four individual firms: CDM Federal Programs Corp., Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., Stantec Consulting Services Inc. and Tetra Tech Inc., and three joint ventures: AECOM-Black & Veatch Lakes and Rivers; Arcadis-Bergmann Lakes and Rivers; and HDR GF LOU CW JV, believed to be a joint venture of HDR Inc. and Gannett Fleming,
Officials have not named specific projects or presented their order. But work on infrastructure, such as the Brandon Road Lock and Dam aquatic nuisance species barrier on the Illinois Waterway may be included among the task orders, according to John McCarthy, Arcadis head of water business area, North America and U.S. country director. For that project, the Corps plans to use physical, electrical and acoustic barriers to prevent invasive Asian carp from passing through.
McCarthy also points to the Lock and Dam 25 replacement project and Lock and Dam 22 fish passage construction project on the Upper Mississippi River as likely civil works.
The awards mean the firms are part of the Great Lakes and Ohio River Division’s design pool, according to a Corps spokesperson.
McCarthy said the multi-award system has several advantages for contractors and owners. “There’s efficiency,” he says. “Because if we’re able to not have the resources locked up for multiple years, but able to move those resources from one specific project to another project, there’s efficiency for the owner in terms of being able to get the best people on each of those projects as they move forward.”
