UPDATE: Judge grants temporary injunction in Oklahoma stadium contract dispute

UPDATE: A Cleveland County judge ruled in favor of HME late Friday to grant the contractor's request for a temporary injunction to halt stadium construction. University officials have said that if the stadium project is not completed in time for next year's football season, the school will lose millions of dollars in damages. Anil Gollahalli, vice president and general counsel for the University of Oklahoma, said that "at this point," construction will continue and the university will appeal the ruling, according to Tulsa World.

Dive Brief:

The lowest bidder for the University of Oklahoma Gaylord Family — Oklahoma Memorial Stadium expansion claims that the university and general contractor Flintco violated Oklahoma’s Public Competitive Bidding Act by awarding the contract to another company, the Southwest Times Record reported.
HME, a Kansas-based structural steel contractor, filed a motion for temporary injunction with a Cleveland County court alleging the university and Flintco removed a portion of the project’s scope of work the day after the bid opening and recalculated the bids so that W&W Steel would be the low bidder, the Times Record reported. HME claims that after W&W was announced the winner, the university and Flintco added the removed work back into W&W’s contract.
HME claims the university and Flintco wanted to award the contract to W&W because of the company's experience with stadium projects, despite the fact that HME satisfied the qualification and quality assurance requirements for the project.

Dive Insight:

Although HME does not have as much stadium experience, the contractor said the fabrication of structural steel for a stadium is the same process the company has used on many other projects, such as airplane hangars and multi-story buildings, the Times Record reported.

In addition, according to HME’s motion, W&W, the second-lowest bidder for the project, did not file a Contractor’s Qualification Statement, which was a requirement of the bid documents. This alone, HME claims, should have disqualified W&W from the process.

"Rather than simply award the contract to HME as the lowest responsible bidder," HME’s motion stated, "Flintco’s actions clearly indicate an intent to show favoritism and circumvent the mandatory requirements of the act. This is a bold-faced favoritism, which is prohibited by Oklahoma law."