San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has awarded Jacobs Engineering Group the construction management (CM) services contract for the Bay Tunnel project.
The contract is valued at US$18M and the entire water transfer project is valued at approximately US$270M. Bids were submitted for the CM contract in April, and the contract duration is 62 months.
Bay Tunnel will involve excavation of 8km of tunnel below the soft ground of San Francisco Bay for the water supply reliability scheme.
The 2.77m diameter tunnel will have a final lining of welded steel pipeline, and the project required construction of two major shafts.
In a statement, Jacobs vice president, Bob Clement, said: ‘Our selection is testament to our capabilities to manage tunnelling in difficult ground conditions’.
Separately, the Commission recently approved construction of the New Crystal Springs Bypass Tunnel, another water transfer project which will be used to convey flows from the Sierra mountains. The project site will be in San Mateo County.
The 1,300m long tunnel, with a final lining of a 2.46m diameter steel pipe, is required to complement the existing bypass pipeline and improve the robustness of the water supply system against seismically-induced hazards.
Concerns over the robustness of the system were raised a decade ago by a landslide.
New Crystal Springs Bypass Tunnel project is expected to take three years to build and the estimated contracted value is US$55M-US$65M.
