Best and final offers (BAFO) are invited by July 15 from all four shortlisted bidders for the Thimble Shoal Channel tunnel being procured by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel (CBBT) District near Norfolk, Va.

Three foreign-led teams submitted bids on Apr. 29 for a large-diameter bored tunnel option. All were far above the estimate by Jacobs. CBBT failed to come to terms with the low bidder, Bouygues, over scope and other changes to its $1.016-billion bid, so it called for BAFOs.

SKW Tunnel Builders (Skanska/Kiewit/Weeks Marine, with WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff and Parsons) elected an immersed concrete tube option but did not submit a bid in the first round. It has been asked to prepare a bid on its immersed concrete tube proposal in the BAFO round.