Maryland is moving to a new contractor to finish out the Francis Scott Key rebuild project. The state announced last week it dropped Kiewit as its vendor for the project and will look for a new partner for phase two.
It could be a risky move for Maryland, which already saw the estimate for the project balloon from about $2 billion to more than $5 billion. The bridge is also estimated to now be completed in 2030, two years after the original completion projection.
Seydina Fall, a senior lecturer in finance and real estate at Johns Hopkins University, says it’s fairly rare for governments to actually exercise the “off-ramp” option in a progressive-build contract like the one Maryland is using for the bridge.
Read more (and listen) at WYPR.
