A couple of major projects and a major lawsuit are in the news.

The PA Supreme Court ruled on April 17 that the lower courts were in error in ruling that the Bricklayer’s Pension Fund had standing to file a Mechanics Lien for the non-payment of obligations from a subcontractor. The case involved an insolvent masonry sub that owed pension payments that related to hours worked on specific projects. Although the owner – in this case Erie developer Scott Development – had no contract with the Bricklayer’s union, the Pension Fund had sought to assert lien rights to get the payments that the defunct masonry contractor owed. The Supreme Court ruled that the pension fund could not extend its relationship with the masonry contractor to assume the same rights to lien a property. The decision removes a level of uncertainty for project owners.

On a less convoluted front, two projects that had been previously announced are moving along in the process of hiring a contractor.

Fee proposals are being taken from Mascaro, PJ Dick and Walsh Construction for the expansion of Dick’s Sporting Goods. The project was announced last year as an expansion of at least 180,000 sq. ft.

CSX is prequalifying contractors for the first phase of the $50 million intermodal yard the company has proposed for the McKees Rocks/Stowe Township area. As many as a dozen heavy/highway contractors are involved in the pre-qualification, including local firms Brayman Construction, Joseph B. Fay, Lane, Mascaro, Mosites and Trumbull Corp., along with national contractors. CSX intends to short list and select later this spring.

Massaro was the low bidder on the WVU Law School renovation at $1,529,000. Lombardi Development bid $1,585,500; Mascaro bid $1,598,000; Volpatt was at $1,610,000 and Landau at $1,616,000.

Some results and follow up to recent bids and request for proposals:

• Jendoco was selected by Penn State for the $8 million Michael Baker Building at the Beaver Campus. Construction isn’t expected until 2015.
• Pitt selected AIM Construction to renovate the Scaife Hall 7th floor labs in Oakland.
• Facility Support Services was low on the $4 million Lawrence Hall classroom and auditorium renovation at Pitt.
• Mascaro Construction was selected as CM for the $8 million Hamburg Hall renovation at Carnegie Mellon
• Developer Wilstro Enterprises announced plans for a $5 million adaptive re-use of the former whiskey distillery on McKean Street near Station Square into the 13-unit Whiskey Barrel Flats condos. Sota Construction will do the work, which is expected to start in the fall.

The Master Builders’ Association announced its Commercial Contractors’ Condition Index (C3) on April 10 and the results were a bit surprising given the winter slowdown. Using a 4.0 grade point system, the MBA contractors gave the industry a solid ‘C’ grade of 2.12. That’s the highest quarterly grade in the two-year history of the C3 Index. View the press release at:

http://mbawpa.org/documents/C3Index2014Q1.pdf

The drags on the index were the lower backlog levels and the lower sentiment about the current business conditions – including low margins. Pushing the grade up from the previous quarters was the increased bidding activity during the past 60 days. My experience is that most contractors tend to judge how things are going by how busy their bid board is and this quarter seems to confirm that suspicion. Several contractors even expressed that they were being more selective in what they were bidding.

One mini-segment of the market that is seeing a boom is the food storage/logistics industry. Gordon Foods is under construction on its 450,000+ sq. ft. warehouse in the Findlay Business Park. As we reported recently, Paragon Foods is taking design/build proposals for a $12 million warehouse in Lawrenceville. And Aldi’s is going through the approval process on a 110,000 sq. ft. expansion of its warehouse at the Victory Business Park in Saxonburg. A. M. King from Charlotte, NC will build that project.

To follow some other projects that recently took proposals, Sewickley Porsche hired A. Martini for its dealership addition; Baker Hughes also selected Martini to handle the expansion of its Clarksburg, WV facility; Ohio Valley Hospital awarded Franjo Construction the contract for renovations to its Hattman Building.

The two national construction reporting services reported unsurprising data on starts in February this week. With slightly more weather disruption than in January, February was a difficult month for construction. Both Reed Construction Data and McGraw-Hill reported construction down 3% from January and from February 2013.

Locally, Massaro Corp. succeeded in landing a pair of projects that had been requesting proposals a week or so ago. Carlow chose Massaro for its $11.8 million expansion and UPMC awarded the company the enabling work at the old Children’s Hospital/Presbyterian Hospital site. Massaro and PJ Dick are the finalists for the deconstruction of the remaining piece of Children’s.

With spring 24 hours away, there is finally some action on some of the construction projects that have been bid over the past few busy weeks.

The colleges are leading the way, lining up work for the summer break. Turner appears to be the successful bidder on Duquesne’s $4.5 million Black Box Theater addition to the Pappert School of Music. TEDCO is the successful bidder on Pitt’s $4 million Chevron Science Center 13th floor renovation. Grove City College selected Landau as the contractor for the $1million MAP West Hall renovation.

Mascaro Construction was the low bidder on the $16.8 million renovations to Building 770 at the WV Regional Tech Park in South Charleston. And Village Green has finally identified Rycon as low bidder on its $30 million Morrow Park City apartments in Shadyside.

A. Martini & Co. was awarded two jobs: selected as the CM for the first phase of Crown Communications new $20 million campus as Southpointe and for the new $7.5 million Connected Health building in Wexford.