This bidding process and award are the project's most recent hurdle, which arose after the April 12 selection of Tutor Perini-Zachry-Parsons' $985-million bid to build the 29-mile Madera-to-Fresno section, even though the group scored the lowest in technical points compared to the four other bidding teams.

The selection caused some to question why the authority changed its bidding rules, which in March 2012 stated the five project teams on the short list would be graded primarily on technical merit, with only the three best-scoring teams moving to the next round, where cost would come into play.

Last-Minute Rule Change

The selection of Tutor Perini-Zachry-Parsons meant an unsuccessful bid for the Spanish team led by Ferrovial and Acciona. It had the best technical marks but one of the higher bids, at $1.37 billion. Another contender was California High-Speed Rail Partners—comprising Irving, Texas-based Fluor Corp., New York City-based Skanska USA, Denver-based PCL Constructors and Omaha-based HDR Engineering—which bid $1.26 billion.

"We are going to wait until we have an opportunity to debrief the owner and see how they came up with their technical scores," says David Parker, Fluor executive director of business development, infrastructure. "I think we would encourage them to establish evaluation criteria from the outset and not change it like they did in the first contract. I think a lot of the bidders had some concern about when [the authority] changed that approach fairly far into the procurement process."

In a April 22 letter to the state Legislature, Morales said there were many "misleading and incorrect" press reports that the bidding process was somehow altered to help the Tutor Perini-led team. Morales said the procurement process for the construction package was developed and reviewed by multiple federal and state agencies and conducted in full compliance with the law.

Morales said a press release covering the Addendum 4 changes to the bidding process was released in August 2012, and the authority detailed that, as long as all five bids were "technically sound," they would each be weighed on a combination of price and technical score, with price being given more weight.

"Any suggestion or implication thatdecisions were made with particular bidders in mind is completely without merit and has no basis in fact," said Morales in the letter.

Court Battles

High-speed rail got back on track on April 18, when the authority successfully negotiated a $5-million settlement with Madera and Merced county farm groups, which had sued over the project's route through sensitive farm land.