Countywide : 2 Tollways to Be Built as ‘Fixed Price’ Jobs

In a bid to prevent cost overruns and delays, two of Orange County’s three publicly owned tollways will be built for fixed prices and their contracts will include guaranteed completion dates, tollway board members have decided.

The boards of the county’s Transportation Corridor Agencies, meeting in Santa Ana, voted last week to solicit bids for so-called “fixed-price,” “design-build” contracts from seven major construction companies. Final contract negotiations are expected to be completed in early 1991.

Officials have not yet decided how to structure the contract for the third tollway.

The lone dissenter in last week’s vote was Costa Mesa Mayor Peter F. Buffa, who said he did not see sufficient advantage in awarding an exclusive design-build contract, which will cost the agencies more, in exchange for the guaranteed prices and completion dates.

The tollway agency staff recommended that approach, and it will use a complicated set of bonuses and penalties to encourage timely work.

Late-penalties are common in construction contracts, but the cost controls and penalties being proposed for the transportation corridors are more stringent and more sophisticated than those usually found in contracts, officials said.

Two teams will be selected--one to do the engineering and design; the other to build.

The agencies already have a design group, and one of the firms participating in it, Irvine-based Fluor Daniel, has a subsidiary, Fluor Constructors Inc., that would also like to be selected for the fixed-price contract.

Asked whether this could create a conflict of interest, agency spokeswoman Donna Stubbs said that Fluor officials “don’t think so, but we’re looking into it.”