The public body organizing the planned $16.1-billion Hudson River rail replacement tunnel project between New Jersey and New York City is revising its contracting strategy to promote a competitive bidding pool.

Gateway Development Commission said April 18 it is breaking up tunneling and related heavy civil works for the two-tube, 2.4-mile tunnel into four contract packages, each for a different section. The group previously planned to let all design and construction under one package.

Gateway is making the change based on feedback from contractors during an industry event in February and as part of refinements made with the Federal Transit Administration for a grant process. Kris Kolluri, CEO of Gateway, said in a statement that the new approach moves more complex early work forward in addition to breaking up tunneling work.

“The industry that will build the Hudson Tunnel project advised us that the best way to ensure a competitive bidding pool was to divide up the largest, most complicated portion of the project into multiple pieces of work,” Kolluri said. “We listened.”

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