Dive Brief:
- Pennsylvania and New Jersey's Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission approved a $396 million bid Tuesday to build a toll bridge linking the two states, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
- Pittsburgh-based Trumbull Corp. was the only company to submit a proposal — more than 20% higher than the commission initially expected — to replace the currently free, 57-year-old bridge reportedly because, among other reasons, the commission added a project labor agreement requirement.
- Other potential deterrents to more bidders, according to The Inquirer, could have been the "functionally obsolete" bridge's complexity, other projects in the area siphoning off contractors and the anticipation of a rise in other work resulting from President Donald Trump's massive infrastructure proposal.
Dive Insight:
PLAs are a point of contention for nonunion industry groups because they typically set out labor and other work conditions — such as dispute resolution and possibly a prevailing wage — and have at least one labor trade union signatory. Nonunion contractors are not prohibited from bidding on or participating in a PLA project, but they must abide by the agreement's conditions if they choose to do so, and critics argue that this restricts fair and open competition.
Earlier this month, a group of private construction industry organizations — including the Associated General Contractors of America and the Associated Builders and Contractors — sent a letter to Trump asking him to repeal former President Barack Obama’s 2009 Executive Order 13502, which encourages federal agencies to use PLAs on projects with a value of more than $25 million. However, Brent Booker, secretary-treasurer of North America's Building Trade Unions, told Construction Dive earlier this month that the order affected only a handful of projects.
Construction companies are largely optimistic about a surge in infrastructure demand under Trump, as he has proposed a $1 trillion infrastructure plan, driven largely by private investment. Despite several political obstacles Trump must overcome to bring the plan to fruition, the increase in national attention to infrastructure issues bodes well for some kind of coming spending bump.