urbanSTL

nextSTL has learned that bids to construct the long planned Loop Trolley have come in $11M above budget, threatening to permanently derail the project. The amount is more than 25% above the trolley’s $43M stated budget. Current plans call for the project to be re-bid without substantial reengineering.

The beauty of the digital age is that readers quickly can be alerted to weak news gathering and thinly incomplete reporting, thus giving the subject of a news story a fighting chance, even when a story is goosed by a sensational headline.

I am referring to nextSTL’s update, this afternoon, on the Loop Trolley project.

Chris Poehler is project manager and the single most knowledgable person on Loop Trolley plans, specifications, bidding process, construction budget and funding sources.

Reporter Alex Ihnen thus had the right man when he left a Facebook message for Chris just yesterday afternoon, asking: “Who would I talk to to get the latest on the loop trolley on or off the record? You? Someone else?”

The message was posted on Friday at 5:41 p.m., Chris tells me. Alex didn’t say he was writing on deadline. He didn’t say he needed a quick response. He didn’t tell Chris that he was working on a story in which he was planning to report that the Loop Trolley was “off the rails” financially, with the project’s future in dire jeopardy.

Chris quite reasonably planned to call Alex back on Monday.

nextSTL’s posted its story with no further notice to Chris Saturday afternoon.

The story correctly reports that construction bids for the project came back some weeks ago $11 million over estimates, a sum that -- if that were the whole story -- would represent a formidable hurdle for the project.

But that's not the whole story. There is more news, information without which nextSTL could not convey to its readers a fair and accurate picture of the status of the Loop Trolley, information the project manager would have explained to nextSTL had nextSTL given him fair notice and a fair chance to respond.

nextSTL reported that “[c]urrent plans call for the project to be re-bid without substantial reengineering.” That’s only partly true.

The project already has been rebid. There was no substantial reengineering. There were, however, a series of more modest engineering and scaling changes. When added up and taken together, they are expected to produce savings of about $2 million.

What’s more, under the project as rebid, work was broken into more pieces and in ways expected to generate more competitive bids. This already has paid off. Certain electrical work originally packaged as part of a single large “civil infrastructure” project element was spun off into a separate bid package. These bids already are back:

The low bid is $1.9 million less than the bid for he same work under the canceled bids.

More information will roll in this week and next.

Bids on the remaining parts of the “civil infrastructure” work are due on November 11.

Another part of what had been included in “civil infrastructure” bid package — power substations — was made a part of a separate package for the project maintenance facilities. Those bids are due on November 18.

Chris and the trolley project team , in other words, responded to bids that came in $11 million over estimates by rebidding the project, identifying about $2M in savings through modest changes, and reconfiguring how the work was bid in ways that already have yielded low bid savings of $1.9 million on the only work for which the bids are in.

The other bids will be in this coming week and the week after.

The project was organized in a way that anticipates that bids will come in over estimates. That’s why a $3.5 million contingency fund already is contained in the budget. That’s why good prospects exist for additional contingency funding to help ensure the Loop Trolley continues to chug up this steep hill be the little engine that can and will.

ST. LOUIS - It's full steam ahead for the Loop trolley project, at least that's what the organizers are hoping.

Initial bids came in $11 million dollars over budget.

Construction of the Loop Trolley could begin in March, according to Mayor Shelley Welsch, who serves as secretary of the Loop Trolley Transportation Development District.

quincunx wrote:Just around the corner again.

framer wrote:Looks like work has started on rehabbing the old Delmar High School building for the Trolley Barn.