DWR awards contract for Oroville Dam spillways repair

Sacramento, Calif. — The Department of Water Resources (DWR) awarded a contract to Kiewit Infrastructure West Co., for repair work on Oroville Dam’s spillways. Repairs are scheduled to begin immediately to have the system operational by November 1, the traditional start of the winter rainy season.

Kiewit’s bid of $275,443,850 was the lowest responsive bid. DWR issued a notice April 17 to Kiewit to begin work. DWR is implementing its recovery plan to ensure the system can safely accommodate potentially heavy inflows from the Feather River watershed to Lake Oroville and subsequent releases from the lake.

The complete recovery or replacement of the spillways will be done in multiple phases due to the enormity of the project and the time limitations of the construction season. Work has already started on portions of the ‘no regrets’ work like road construction and slope stabilization in and around future work areas which needs to be completed regardless of the spillway recovery design decisions.

DWR announced the bids Saturday and spent the weekend reviewing them. The three bidders and their amounts were:

• Kiewit Infrastructure West Co. (CA): $275,443,850
• Barnard Ames JV (MT): $276,965,690
• Oroville Dam Constructors (CA): $344,129,100

DWR also provided a corrected Engineer’s Estimate of $231,715,373 for the work, after finding an error in the original estimate of $220,100,000.

Details of the three bids will not be made public, as they contain design information that is considered Critical Energy/Electric Infrastructure Information by federal regulators and could cause a security risk if released.

For more information, visit the Oroville Spillway Incident webpage at https://www.water.ca.gov/oroville-spillway/index.cfm.