By Mark Fischenich, Mankato Free Press

NORTH MANKATO — Six months after a long-awaited Highway 14 construction project was derailed by bids that were 31 percent higher than expected, a new set of bids opened Friday appears to have the project back on budget and back on track.

“We’re quite surprised at how low the low bid was,” said Matt Rottermond, project manager for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. “It’s good for taxpayers.”

That’s the opposite reaction from the one on Aug. 31, 2011, when the lowest bid of $23.6 million was nearly a third higher than the $18 million engineer’s estimate for building a new interchange at Highway 14 and Nicollet County Road 41 and adding more than a mile of additional four-lane expressway to the west.

A month later, MnDOT rejected the bids, saying they were unreasonably high although the legitimate cost of the project may have risen to around $20 million.

Later still, MnDOT decided to break the project into two parts and bid the first half this spring and the second half, for construction in 2013, in the fall.

Friday’s bid-opening brought three bids ranging from $11.2 million to $12.4 million and another at $13.8 million. But a fifth bid by Mathiowetz Construction of Sleepy Eye came in just under $9.4 million.

The actual cost to taxpayers will be even less than $9.4 million because the bid includes “road-user costs” under the bidding process MnDOT used that factors in the impact on drivers of a major detour of traffic off of Highway 14 during construction. By using that bidding process, contractors’ bids become more competitive if their proposed construction schedules get a roadway reopened to traffic more quickly.

Rottermond said the portion of the Mathiowetz bid that represents “road-user costs” associated with the detour won’t be made public until MnDOT officials in St. Paul finish analyzing the bids this week.

But even at $9.4 million, the bid could put the project back on path to the original $18 million estimate. That’s because the first phase represents at least half of the work that needs to be done over two years to complete the project.

“In terms of a dollar amount, I’d say slightly more (than half),” Rottermond said, cautioning that his estimate is a rough guess because the final designs of the second phase aren’t completed yet. “… This definitely helps us get closer to that (original) number, that’s for sure.”

And it allows North Mankato officials to breathe a sigh of relief after pushing for the interchange for more than a decade. City Administrator Wendell Sande said the low bids appear to have eliminated any chance that MnDOT would put the project on hold.

“Had the bids been greatly over the estimate, that would have been a different issue,” Sande said. “… It’s certainly good news.”

If bids for the second phase also come in low, there could even be a small refund for North Mankato and Nicollet County, which are paying an 11.4 percent share and a 10.8 percent share of the total cost, respectively.

With fuel costs rising — and diesel fuel being a major cost for construction companies — Sande was nervous about a repeat of last summer’s high bids.

MnDOT made some changes in the project after the initial bids were rejected, but none will be visible to drivers, Rottermond said. There were still be the interchange with three roundabouts serving the ramps and a frontage road on the south side of the new roadway, along with a little more than a mile of new expressway.

This year’s phase of construction involves moving 800,000 cubic yards of earth, including digging several storm water ponds, building up the embankments for the interchange ramps and for the bridge that will carry County Road 41 (Rockford Road) traffic over Highway 14. Two of the new lanes of the expressway also will be completed this year, allowing the detour to be ended and traffic to return to Highway 14 by winter.

“We’re hopeful for starting on April 30,” Rottermond said. “It all depends on how quickly the folks up in St. Paul can get the contracts signed and approved.”

Rottermond anticipates the detour of Highway 14 traffic onto Lookout Drive and County Road 6 to begin in mid-May at the earliest and end at the beginning of November. The entire project is expected to be completed by the end of the 2013 construction season.