AECOM-HNTB Team Wins $186M Contract to Manage NYC Second Avenue Subway Extension

The board of New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority voted on March 26 to approve a $186.6-million contract with AECOM-HNTB JV for undertaking administration marketing consultant companies on MTA’s $7.7-billion Second Avenue subway extension second section. 

The three way partnership is a crew of AECOM USA Inc. and HNTB New York Engineering and Structure PC. The JV might be accountable for overseeing work below three of 4 building contracts related to the undertaking for a 91-month contract time period. The companies didn’t instantly reply to inquiries concerning the undertaking. 

“We need to develop our capability on a brief foundation,” Janno Lieber, CEO of MTA, stated throughout a press convention after the assembly. He added that the companies deliver experience in areas resembling tunnel boring and sophisticated programs past the “meat and potatoes transit stuff like tracks and alerts” that MTA employees sometimes deal with.

MTA is planning to increase the Second Avenue subway line about 1.76 miles from 96th Road to one hundred and twenty fifth Road, and so as to add stations at 106th, 116th and one hundred and twenty fifth streets. 

The company says it acquired three responses to its request for proposals. The opposite proposals got here from Bechtel Infrastructure Corp. and Second Avenue Subway East Harlem Collaborative, a JV of Jacobs and TYLin Engineering, data present. MTA employees wrote that AECOM-HNTB initially proposed a price of $238.4 million, they usually reached the agreed not-to-exceed worth by way of negotiations. 

AECOM was additionally a part of a design and engineering three way partnership that contributed to the first phase of the Second Avenue subway undertaking. The road started working at first of 2017. 

Contract Packages

MTA awarded a $182-million contract in December 2023 to Queens-based C.A.C. Industries Inc. for utility relocation and constructing remediation/safety. Whereas that work paused for a time final 12 months amid considerations over funding associated to congestion pricing tolls in a lot of Manhattan, work has resumed. Managing this contract doesn’t fall below the scope of labor awarded to AECOM-HNTB. 

The second building contract covers rehabilitation of an current tunnel phase, plus tunnel boring, building of cross passages and building of shells for the stations at 116th and one hundred and twenty fifth streets. It’s at present in procurement, in line with MTA. 

The third contract would cowl building of the tunnel and structural shell for the 106th Road station, and the fourth’s scope is deliberate to incorporate building of station entrances and ancillary buildings, plus fit-out of stations and tunnels. 

Throughout its assembly, the MTA board additionally voted to approve a $59.96-million contract modification with Part 2 Partnership, a three way partnership of WSP USA Inc. and STV Inc., for advancing design for the fourth building contract. Part 2 Partnership’s base contract was valued at $120.5 million and was beforehand elevated to $195.5 million. 

Prices and Funding

MTA is funding the subway extension partially with $3.4 billion the Federal Transit Administration agreed to offer in November 2023. The undertaking can be a part of a slate of labor that MTA officers have deliberate to fund utilizing $15 billion in bonds to be paid down with tolls from New York Metropolis’s congestion pricing program south of sixtieth Road in Manhattan. Final month, U.S. Dept. of Transportation officers stated they had been rescinding approval for the first-in-the-country program, however MTA is continuous this system because it sues DOT officers, looking for to have the termination declared null. 

The estimated $7.7-billion value of the undertaking has drawn criticism, much like the $4.5-billion first section. However as a substitute of contemplating the associated fee on a per-mile foundation, Lieber stated value ought to as a substitute be considered when it comes to what number of riders the system serves and in contrast the subway’s ridership to the quantity of people that fly within the U.S. As of 2023, the subway had a every day ridership of about 3.6 million, in line with MTA, in comparison with 2.9 million every day airline passengers, in line with the Federal Aviation Administration. 

“You need to … have programs that serve extra folks when you have a much bigger ridership,” Lieber stated. “And by the cost-per-rider normal, we’re on the low finish of precise prices.”