CHICAGO — Metra’s board of directors on Wednesday approved contracts totaling $13.6 million to two consultants to assist the commuter rail agency in purchasing locomotives and coaches.
One contract, for $10 million, was awarded to STV Inc. of Philadelphia, Pa., to provide quality assurance, engineering, and administrative assistance for Metra’s planned purchase of new commuter cars.
The second contract, for $3.6 million, went to Raul V. Bravo & Associates Inc., of Reston, Va., for assistance with Metra’s purchase of remanufactured locomotives. That $71 million purchase was approved by Metra in February.
The contract to STV calls for assisting Metra in the administration of the contract, reviews of design drawings and engineering data, first article inspections, in-progress and in-plant inspections, design verification, product acceptance testing and oversight of the contractor’s performance of work.
Metra said STV was the highest-scored of three offers the agency received in response to a December request for proposals. The other proposals came from two Chicago firms, Atkins North America Inc. and WSP USA Inc.
Metra said STV Inc. has committed to meet a 10 percent Disadvantaged Business Enterprise goal by utilizing Virginkar & Associates, Inc. and Bronner Group LLC.
Metra in March issued a request for proposals for at least 200 new railcars, saying it would allow manufacturers to propose alternative car designs to the bilevel gallery cars used in Chicago for nearly 70 years. [See “Metra seeking new cars, is open to ‘alternative designs,’” Trains News Wire, March 20, 2019.]
Raul V. Bravo outscored STV, the only other bidder, in winning the contract for quality assurance, engineering ,and administrative assistance for Metra’s purchase of 15 remanufactured locomotives from from Progress Rail Locomotives.
Progress Rail will take existing EMD SD70MAC freight locomotives and upgrade and configure them for passenger use. All components will either be refurbished, upgraded or new. The newly remanufactured locomotives will be designated as SD70MACH locomotives. [See “Metra board approves locomotive purchase: SD70MACH models to come out of EMD,” Trains News Wire, Feb. 20, 2019.]
I had a nice little writeup on this news item and the comment server was down.
In brief, STV better find a decent bidder for “new technology” gallery cars. No more Nippon Sharyo debacles.