Skanska-Hunt settles $1.4B WA convention center termination dispute

Dive Brief:

The Washington State Convention Center (WSCC) and joint venture Skanska-Hunt have resolved their dispute over the general contractor’s firing from the $1.4 billion convention center renovation, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported.
WSCC officials said Skanska-Hunt will not continue as general contractor/construction manager (GC/CM) and that they will hire a new contractor. Neither Skanska-Hunt nor the WSCC provided details of the settlement, but, according to the Seattle Times, Skanska-Hunt did approximately $4 million worth of work before being fired.
The Pine Street Group, which manages the convention center renovation, fired Skanska-Hunt in March, and Skanska-Hunt won an injunction preventing a replacement contractor from being hired before a trial.

Dive Insight:

Although Skanska-Hunt won the court action to prevent the WSCC from hiring another GC/CM, according to press releases from all parties, convention center officials can now either restart the bidding process or choose one of the other two original bid teams, Mortenson-PCL and Clark Construction-Lease Crutcher Lewis, to replace Skanska-Hunt. Convention center officials said they will decide whether to proceed with the GC/CM structure or switch to the design-build method, according to the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.

After Skanska-Hunt had worked on the convention center project for approximately eight months, Pine Street Group terminated the joint venture, and, at the time, said the joint venture wasn’t a "good fit." However, according to the Daily Journal of Commerce, WSCC officials feared that Skanska-Hunt wasn’t aggressive enough in pursuing cost savings on the project.

In a statement after the settlement, Skanska Executive Vice President and General Manager Chris Toher said it "recognizes the valuable services our team provided over the past nine months," according to the Daily Journal of Commerce. The case was set to go to trial, but, in light of this latest agreement, the trial won't be necessary.

WSCC officials have said completion of the renovation project is critical in order to be able to draw larger conventions and events to Seattle. When construction is finished, the existing convention center will have doubled in size. An official told the Business Journal that construction on the project is expected to still begin in 2017 and be completed in 2020.