University of California, Merced, Vice Chancellor Daniel Feitelberg in late September rejected all six responses to an RFQ for a long-term DBFOM contract to expand the campus to accommodate 4,000 more students by 2020. A revised RFQ was immediately issued to the same teams on a pass-fail basis after “across-the-board problems with teams following rules,” says a project source.

The University’s goal was to shortlist three to five teams this month and select a developer in the fall of 2015. Lead advisor Jones Lang LaSalle insisted it could handle the financial and technical aspects of the procurement itself. It couldn’t, and the advisory team, which includes Nossaman, now has been expanded to include Ernst & Young for finance and a larger role for AECOM on technical aspects. “This bodes well for the re-release” of the RFQ says the source.