PFA Issues RFP for STJ Projects Amid Dispute Over $137M Disaster Recovery Contract

The V.I. Public Finance Authority’s Office of Disaster Recovery is pushing ahead with the “Rebuild USVI” initiative, issuing a bid package this week for three projects on St. John while it fights a lawsuit that claims its recent award of a $137 million contract to oversee the territory’s disaster recovery work violated federal procurement regulations and conflict of interest rules.

The PFA rejected those claims and last week filed a motion to dismiss the suit by Hill International, which is seeking a temporary restraining order to stay the three-year contract that was awarded to CH2M until the matter is settled. The PFA has also filed a motion for a protective order and is seeking leave to file documents under seal in the Hill complaint, claiming it needs to protect “source selection information, confidential and proprietary trade secret information, and/or any other competitively sensitive information.”

According to the complaint, the enormous disparity between Hill’s bid of just over $30 million to oversee some $16.7 billion in disaster recovery work and CH2M’s bid of $137 million “is so great as to make the award to CH2M arbitrary and capricious,” especially since the evaluation committee scored Hill highest of all as to “cost effectiveness” and second-highest overall of the nine participating bidders.