The Daily Reporter – WI Construction News & Bids Wisconsin's Construction Authority
Metropolitan Airports Commission officials are moving forward with a project to do “corrective work” on the Silver Ramp, a $240 million parking ramp and transit center at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. (Submitted image)
By Brian Johnson
BridgeTower Media Newswires
A $240 million parking structure that opened less than two years ago at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is up for a series of repairs related to water intrusion, ponding and freeze-thaw damage.
The Metropolitan Airports Commission said in a request for proposals that the 11-level, 5,000-stall ramp needs “corrective work,” which includes repairing “spalled and delaminated post-tension concrete beams due to freeze-thaw action from water intrusion.”
Workers will also repair “large surface ponding areas on all elevation levels” of the ramp to “allow water to drain,” according to the RFP.
The project’s cost is to be determined.
Contractor bids for the repair project are due this week and “we should have a better idea what the work might cost once all bids are reviewed,” MAC spokesman Patrick Hogan said in an email Monday.
Hogan added, “We are working with all the firms involved in design and construction to determine who is ultimately responsible for the issues and the cost of corrections. However, we are moving forward with the construction bid now to ensure the repairs can be made during this construction season. Ultimately all the issues we are seeing are repairable.”
Designed by Miller Dunwiddie and built by PCL Construction Services, the Silver Ramp opened in 2020. Besides parking, the ramp houses car rental customer service counters, a transit center, off-site parking and employee shuttle, secure bicycle facilities, direct connections to the blue Line LRT station and more.
Miller Dunwiddie is “aware there is a call for bids regarding corrective work on the Silver Ramp, however, they do not involve Miller Dunwiddie or our scope of services for the project,” Miller Dunwiddie Marketing Manager Kathy Brady said in an email.
PCL Construction couldn’t be reached for comment Monday.
This isn’t the first time the project has come under scrutiny.
A 2020 audit addressed delays and found “financial control” deficiencies related to the project, including more than $4 million in “unresolved project costs.”
In general, however, the audit determined that general contractor PCL Construction Services has provided “adequate oversight in the administration and execution of work activities” related to construction of the ramp, according to Metropolitan Airports Commission documents.
Philadelphia-based Talson Solutions conducted the audit in partnership with the MAC. The audit studied construction activity and documentation from November 2017 through January 2020.
“We have followed the contractual obligations we have with the Metropolitan Airports Commission for the construction of the Silver Ramp and we have cooperated fully with the audit of the project,” Michael Headrick, a PCL executive now with the firm’s Los Angeles office, said in 2020.
PCL was awarded a record $229.3 million lump sum contract for the project in October 2017. Since then, $5.5 million worth of change orders and $795,000 of “unit price” additions have increased the contract’s value to $235.6 million, as Finance & Commerce has reported.
PCL’s bid was 13% below the MAC’s $262.9 million estimate. The new ramp is between the Red and Blue ramps and the Post Office building at MSP’s Terminal 1.
