Lessons from an HDD Project That Was Awarded for $1.74 Million with 90 Days to Complete That Took in Excess of $6 Million and More Than 1,000 Days

The City and its Engineer bid, during the summer of 2005, about 3,200 ft of 36 inch HDPE pipe for a lake crossing to be installed via Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) in order that this water transmission line could be put in service by May 1, 2006. On July 14, 2005 when bids were tabulated, Company X became the lowest bidder at $1,740,000. The second and third lowest bidders were at $ 2,004,053. and $ 2,289,400, respectively. The contract completion date was agreed upon as November 1, 2005 at the pre-construction meeting held on August 16, 2005. The entire, final design and alignment selection were based on only 4 soil borings and no appropriate geotechnical baseline report was ever done or used by the Engineer or their HDD consultant. The driller had so many problems that could have been anticipated even if one of the parties involved in this project spent a few more minutes studying the implications of the 4 soil borings. The author was retained on November 14, 2007, by the law firm representing the driller, to conduct an independent investigation as to the causes that led to the delay and cost overruns on this project after the driller had been at the site for longer than 1,000 days and had spent over $6 million by their estimate. Loss of drilling fluids, caving of roads, settlement of houses, buildings, and other calamities were the outcome that the driller, the engineers and the city faced. The lives of local residents were disrupted for many months. There were many lessons learnt and the author shares many of them with the attendees of this conference in the hope similar problems can be avoided in the future.