Highway division tells Senate Transportation bids ran about 9% above engineers' estimates since 2021

Jeremy Reed, chief engineer at the highway division, told the Senate Transportation Committee on Feb. 7 that actual contractor bids ran above the division’s engineering estimates across recent years, creating programmatic strain and prompting changes in how the agency forecasts costs.

"Between then and December of 24, we executed $851,000,000 worth of projects. And again, programmatically over the whole, span, we estimated those projects to be about $780,000,000 worth of work. So, obviously, we were off about 9%," Reed said.

Reed showed year-by-year differences and told the committee that calendar year 2022 represented the largest gap: that year the division underestimated bids by roughly 17%. In 2023 the division’s underestimates narrowed to about 6%, and in 2024 they were about 7% below final bid prices.

The discrepancy has operational consequences, committee…