The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has short listed three design-build teams to compete for the long-awaited Green Line Extension. The $2.3-billion project will extend the light rail line on two new branches from Lechmere Station in East Cambridge to Union Square in Somerville and to College Avenue in Medford. The project also calls for seven new stations, including the relocated Lechmere Station.

The teams being considered to deliver the 4.5-mile extension as a single firm working under a single contract include:

GLX CONSTRUCTORS

  • • Fluor Enterprises Inc.
  • • The Middlesex Corporation
  • • Herzog Contracting Corp.
  • • Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Inc.

GREEN LINE PARTNERS

  • • The Lane Construction Corp. 
  • • Salini Impregilo, S.p.A
  • • Judlau Contracting Inc.
  • • LMH-C.M.C. di Ravenna Joint Venture, comprised of LM Heavy Civil Construction LLC and Cooperativa Muratori & Cementisti-C.M.C di Ravenna Societa Cooperativa

 WALSH BARLETTA GRANITE, JV

  • • Walsh Construction Company II LLC
  • • Barletta Heavy Division Inc.
  • • Granite Construction Inc.

The winning team will reportedly be selected by the end of the year and the project is slated to open in 2021. 

“The strong interest in the project from these highly-regarded firms underscores that the project is being taken as seriously by the design build industry as it is by MassDOT and the MBTA,” John Dalton, the project’s program manager for the MBTA, said in a statement. “These firms have the well-earned reputation for delivering complex projects in the United States and abroad and we are pleased that they are demonstrating an interest in working with us to successfully deliver this Project.”

In May, the MBTA fiscal control board and Massachusetts Dept. of Transportation board voted to advance a scaled-down version of the project after costs ballooned $1 billion over its original $2-billion budget. The cost overruns were blamed on the fact that the MBTA had little experience using the construction manager-general contractor method. That move came three months after the T terminated contracts with four consortiums: general contractor White-Skanska-Kiewit, project manager HDR-Gilbane, estimator Stanton Constructability Services and designer AECOM-HNTB.

State officials, in May, also made it clear that the project would still need Federal Transportation Authority approval and that they could pull the plug on the project at any time. The FTA pledged $1 billion for the original project, and the money cannot be repurposed. 

Dalton was hired as program manager in November and in January, the Boston Globe reported that President Trump put the project on his list of priority infrastructure projects.