This chapter discusses the essential requirements to run a tunnel contract successfully.
An article yesterday about the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's decision to delay two tunnel excavation contracts referred incorrectly at one point to the estimated cost of a project to link the Long Island Rail Road with Grand Central Terminal.
A committee advising Governor Christie on transportation issues concluded that the required notice could affect the tunnel-boring contracts that have been awarded.
Yet Mr Prescott is rewarding Railtrack by giving it responsibility for the rail link to the Channel tunnel, a contract that may yield the company £2 billion of profits.
And it agreed to a tunnel-drilling contract for $337 million, which was $17 million more than it had budgeted.
Sound Transit awarded the tunnel-boring contract to the Obayashi Corporation, one of the largest Japanese general contractors, for $280 million with a $20 million contingency, an estimated $42 million more than expected by the agency.
Obayashi and the Beacon Hill Constructors were the only firms to compete for the Beacon Hill Tunnel and Station contract, the latter bidding $305 million.
The author suggested that this meant a rise in salary, but he was told that he ought to consider himself lucky to go on at his existing figure as it was a toss-up among five men two from the Mersey Tunnel, two from other contracts just completed, and the author.
New Jersey Transit, the lead agency on the project, broke ground on the western end of the tunnel last year and has issued contracts for digging on each side of the Hudson River.
Other big transport contracts include toll tunnels in Hong Kong and the metro in Dubai.
After the initial phase of a billion-dollar contract to build the tunnel was awarded to a consortium of companies, costs began to exceed estimates by the millions.
