Prices and Contracts

Two of Orange County’s three publicly owned tollways will be built for a fixed price with guaranteed completion dates in an effort to eliminate cost overruns and delays on the massive projects, tollway agency board members decided Thursday.

The boards of the county’s Transportation Corridor Agencies voted to solicit bids for fixed-price, design-build contracts from seven major construction companies, with final negotiations expected to be completed during the first quarter of 1991.

A bonus-and-penalty system is being proposed for the fixed-price contracts, which, combined, will exceed $1 billion.

Actually, two teams will be selected, officials said. One will build, and the other will engineer and design, even though the tollway boards already have a design consortium in place.

One of the firms participating in the existing design consortium, Irvine-based Fluor Daniel, has a subsidiary, Fluor Constructors Inc., that would like to be selected for the fixed-price contract.