The Tennessee Department of Transportation hired four companies under contracts totaling a maximum of $56 million to start work on an Interstate 55 bridge from Memphis to Arkansas and preliminary efforts on three “toll lane” corridors in the state’s urban areas, even before announcing target areas for public-private partnerships.
State officials made their plans public at a December news conference but were already well under way on the new form of road work and the bridge job. The Transportation Department hired firms through a qualification based selection process, which does not involve bids but allows the state to negotiate costs based on the scope of work. State and federal laws require a qualifications based selection process for engineering, and cost is not a factor, according to a department spokesperson.
The state tabbed national infrastructure company HNTB, which has a Nashville office, for an on-call planning contract to prepare a grant application and the environmental document for the I-55 bridge project across the Mississippi River from Memphis to Arkansas with costs and fees not to exceed $1 million, according to the Transportation Department.
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For three toll lane projects in which the state will contract with a private contractor that will invest funds in road projects and recoup expenses through tolls, the state hired three separate consultants/advisors: HNTB for technical work in a five-year contract with a ceiling of $50 million, KPMG for financial advice with a maximum cost of $4.54 million and Hunton, Andrews, Kurth, LLP for legal work at a rate of $450 hourly for attorneys and $175 hourly for non-attorney work. All are firms that assisted other states in developing public-private partnerships, according to TDOT.