An upcoming bevy of major road and rail issues — and the studies that come with them — have overloaded Fairfax County transportation planners, according to the department’s director and county documents asking for outside help.
The numerous high-profile projects include the expansion of Metrorail to Dulles International Airport and a military base realignment at Fort Belvoir slated to send 22,000 new jobs there. The sheer quantity of work is outside the scope of the Transportation Department’s 21-member planning staff, according to Director Kathy Ichter, who on Monday said there is a “critical mass of projects coming all at the same time.” She expects to see studies in Annandale, Bailey’s Crossroads, Lake Anne, Tysons Corner and the Dulles Corridor, among other reviews.
“The problem is the overall number of these special studies going on at once,” she said.
The county this month issued a request for proposals to bring in “on call” consultants that can undertake planning tasks at the department’s request.
The text of the request says the Board of Supervisors has called on the staff “to perform a considerable amount of transportation planning and conceptual engineering work” outside the department’s normal capabilities.
Procurement regulations can delay hiring a consultant for months, and Ichter said the department will benefit by having some contracts already approved. She said the “on call” system already exists in departments like Public Works and Environmental Services.
The system does, however, mean the county won’t need to seek sealed bids for each individual consulting project. Bidding is put in place to ensure the lowest priced reasonable proposal to do a job is selected.
“We still negotiate costs,” Ichter said. “But we want to make sure that we have people that can do the work … We’ll still be able to get prices down by the negotiations that take place on the individual task.”
