The (Almost) Daily Brief

Proposals Close Dec. 18 on Management Plans for Nine Priority River Bridges

By Megan Dayton · 11/3/2026

PROJECTS  The U.S. Highway 14 interchange at 60th Avenue Northwest in Rochester goes to construction on a $76.2 million contract. Olmsted County commissioners approved it on Nov. 3. Mathiowetz Construction of Sleepy Eye submitted the lowest of eight bids, and the highest came in at $94.5 million. Public Works Director Ben Johnson said the lowest three bids sat within 8 percent of each other, and said that indicated a competitive process. With planning, engineering, land acquisition, and other costs the work runs to $93 million, and Johnson called it the largest locally led project in county history. Estimates stood at $50 million in 2022 while design options were still open. A $60 million Minnesota Corridors of Commerce grant covers the bulk of the cost. Construction starts this fall and is scheduled to finish by the end of 2028. Roadways stay open through the winter, and 60th Avenue closes once major construction begins. Johnson said Highway 14 stays open through most of construction with short-term closures and detours.

Source: Rochester Post Bulletin, Nov. 3

FUNDING  Four Minnesota grade-crossing projects draw up to $39.4 million in federal grants. The Federal Railroad Administration released the awards on Oct. 30 inside $1,241,951,985 under the fiscal 2025 and 2026 Railroad Crossing Elimination Grant Program, which the infrastructure law authorized and which carries 91 projects across 37 states. Minneapolis takes up to $32 million for Connecting Camden, selected for final design, right-of-way acquisition, and construction, to eliminate or close at least one of three at-grade crossings on the CPKC corridor. MnDOT takes up to $3,672,576 for Hinckley Subdivision Updates, selected for final design and construction, to move six at-grade crossings on the BNSF Hinckley Subdivision from passive to active warning and to rebuild crossing surfaces and roadway approaches in Pine and Isanti counties. Dilworth takes up to $2 million for planning and project development toward a future grade separation and the closure of an at-grade crossing where three mainline tracks converge on the BNSF Staples Subdivision. Saint Louis County takes up to $1.7 million to plan safety work at four public road crossings on a Canadian National mainline, weighing closures and grade separations. Each recipient carries a 20 percent non-Federal match, and the agency names BNSF as a possible source for the Dilworth and MnDOT shares.

Sources: Federal Railroad Administration, selection summaries, Oct. 30; Construction Dive, Nov. 3

BIZ  Engineering firms carry eleven months of backlog against six months at architecture firms. Morrissey Goodale published the figures in its Nov. 2 Word on the Street, drawing on the 180 chief executives, investors, and corporate development executives who attended its M&A and capitalization symposium in Houston in October. Of those, 81 percent expect the same or better performance in the year ahead, up from 77 percent a year earlier, 90 percent expect revenue growth next year, and 79 percent expect profit growth. Mick Morrissey writes that chief executives are raising the prospect of a shock that ends the expansion, and names three: a burst artificial-intelligence bubble carrying the wider economy down, escalation of the wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and the industry’s own exposure to the technology it is buying. He cites the tech selloff that erased $1.8 trillion in market value, with Intel down 28 percent and Alphabet down 13 percent.

Source: Morrissey Goodale, Word on the Street, Nov. 2

POLICY  Liquefied natural gas facility rules move to the industry safety standards now in force. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration published the proposed rule on Nov. 3 under docket PHMSA-2019-0091, and comments close Jan. 4, 2027. The proposal would rewrite 49 CFR parts 191 and 193 to incorporate current industry safety standards by reference and to answer congressional mandates directing the agency to fold risk-based approaches into the rules for certain LNG facilities. The agency will announce the date of a public meeting of its statutory advisory committees in a later Federal Register notice. Siting, design, and fire protection work at LNG plants is written against the editions of the standards the rule incorporates.

Source: Federal Register, Nov. 3

BIZ  September construction spending ran below August, with private nonresidential work the one line that rose. The Census Bureau released the September estimates on Nov. 2 as release CB26-176. Total construction ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $2,186.1 billion, 1.9 percent (±0.7 percent) below the revised August rate of $2,227.4 billion and 2.7 percent (±1.5 percent) below September 2025. Private residential work ran at $848.8 billion, 5.5 percent (±1.3 percent) below August. Private nonresidential work ran at $790.6 billion, 1.1 percent (±0.5 percent) above August, and the private office category, which Engineering News-Record reports carries data center work, ran 39.5 percent above September 2025. Public construction ran at $546.8 billion, 0.1 percent (±1.3 percent) below August. Public highway work ran at $149.2 billion, 0.3 percent (±3.6 percent) below August, and public educational work ran at $113.1 billion, unchanged (±1.3 percent) from August. October figures publish Dec. 1.

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, release CB26-176, Nov. 2; Engineering News-Record, Nov. 2

PROJECTS  A new Municipal Service Center in Columbia Heights goes to Oertel Architects on a $1.67 million design contract. The city council approved the agreement on Oct. 26. City Manager Aaron Chirpich said the contract covers exterior design, mechanical, electrical, and structural engineering, material selection, cost estimates, site planning, and public engagement, and that the firm will prepare bidding documents, run the public bidding process, and provide limited construction inspection along with progress meetings and closeout. The city sent the request for proposals to five firms with public works experience. Two declined because of existing workloads and a third did not respond, leaving Oertel Architects and Wold Architects & Engineers as the only responders. Chirpich said the city scored on qualifications instead of price because the project carries state and federal money, and that both scores landed close together with Oertel slightly ahead. The two fees sat within $50,000 of each other, and the Oertel fee was $1,671,000.73. The city holds a $2.5 million state appropriation and $850,000 in federal funding authorization, with a further congressional request pending. The facility forms part of the public works campus project.

Source: ABC Newspapers, Oct. 30

FUNDING  PFAS removal from drinking water would draw $10 billion over five years under a bipartisan House bill. Representatives Laura Gillen and Brian Fitzpatrick introduced the Protect Clean Water Act on Oct. 22. It would carry $2 billion per year for five years and replace money that lapsed Sept. 30 when the infrastructure law’s emerging-contaminants account expired. The measure would amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to swap the $100 million per year authorized from 2020 through 2024 for $1 billion per year from 2027 through 2031, and send a further $1 billion per year through the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds for treatment technology and water infrastructure. The American Water Works Association estimated in 2024 that 7,000 entry points need capital work to treat PFAS in drinking water, at $37.1 billion to $48.3 billion through 2029, and put the annualized cost including operations and maintenance at $2.7 billion to $3.5 billion. Federal data record 1,700 public water systems at or above the 4 parts per trillion maximum contaminant level for PFOA or PFOS. The Clean Water Construction Coalition, the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, the WateReuse Association, and Citizens Campaign for the Environment endorsed the bill.

Source: Smart Cities Dive, Oct. 26

POLICY  A twelve-month moratorium now blocks data center development in Caledonia. The city council in Caledonia, in Houston County in southeastern Minnesota, approved it at its Oct. 26 meeting. The same meeting carried a road-work change order and reviews of traffic-signal upgrades and sewer repairs. Public Works and Zoning Director Casey Klug told the council that water-tower cleaning was finished. He said staff were working with a system integrator on radio upgrades to address freezing and communication faults in the city SCADA system. He also said the city planned to repair a stormwater culvert at the South Badger Street outfall that had detached from its pipe and slid downhill. Work on Warrior Avenue was waiting on a utility relocation, leaving the paving schedule unsettled as the construction season closed. Clerk and Administrator Jake Dickson reported that the city had received a first look at its utility rate study from SEH.

Source: Caledonia Argus, Nov. 3

PROJECTS  Terminal 1 at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport heads into a $480 million modernization with JE Dunn Construction as construction manager at risk. The Metropolitan Airports Commission set that budget for the whole project according to the request for qualifications, and the contractor announced the selection in an Oct. 19 release. The contract covers demolition of the Energy Management Center that has served Terminal 1 since the early 1960s and construction of an expanded plant with modernized heating and cooling generation, including steam boiler plant upgrades, full replacement of the chilled water plant, an industrial heat-recovery chiller, a new heating-water distribution system, and possible installation of a 28-well geothermal system. Scope also carries deconstruction of 183,400 square feet of concourse and construction of 309,990 square feet of new concourse. The release states that planning and design are already under way, and the designer has not been publicly identified. The contractor expects enabling work in 2027, major construction in 2028, and final completion in 2032.

Source: Construction Dive, Oct. 27

WORKFORCE  Artificial intelligence is rearranging construction teams more often than cutting them. BRG ran the survey in July 2026 across 58 builders and 51 owners, with most findings drawn from 65 North American respondents. Among those, 46 percent changed team structures and 38 percent retrained staff, while 18 percent added headcount in some areas and 11 percent cut it. Another 29 percent created new kinds of roles, 20 percent changed the skills they hire for, 31 percent redeployed staff, and 51 percent changed how much they lean on outside vendors, consultants, and contractors. More than two-thirds put at least $250,000 into the technology over the previous two years, including 37 percent at $1 million or more, and 15 percent said they had integrated it across projects and operations. Richard Fultineer, who heads global construction at the firm, said the first effects land on information-intensive work, naming cost estimating, procurement, design review, schedule oversight, and contract and compliance review. Forty percent named a shortage of skilled talent as a constraint, and 43 percent named liability for errors the technology generates.

Source: Construction Dive, Oct. 21

ENG  A Fort Hood microgrid will carry critical buildings for at least fourteen days without the grid. The Army Corps of Engineers made a $61.5 million award on Oct. 30 to Dominion Privatization Texas, a Dominion Energy subsidiary, for the Phantom Warrior Microgrid. The hybrid plant pairs 3 megawatts of natural gas reciprocating generation, a 1.5-megawatt solar canopy over parking behind Building 1001, and a 1-megawatt battery, with automated switching and microgrid controls. It serves 2.9 megawatts of connected load, 2.12 megawatts of it classed as critical and 0.79 megawatts noncritical, and ties into the installation’s 12.47-kilovolt distribution system. Automated switches separate portions of two distribution feeders from the wider system during an outage, the gas engines set the voltage and frequency reference for the solar array, and the engines stay disconnected under normal grid conditions while the array offsets demand. Completion is scheduled for early May 2029. Defense budget documents submitted in 2022 carried a $31.5 million cost for the project. The Army is planning at least three further installation microgrids targeted for fiscal 2030.

Source: Engineering News-Record, Nov. 2

PROJECTS  A new Mississippi River bridge at Lansing opens Nov. 6. The Iowa Department of Transportation has a ceremony planned for the span, which replaces a bridge dating to 1931. The crossing carries traffic between northeastern Iowa and western Wisconsin, and it is the single Mississippi bridge in the 60 miles between La Crescent in Minnesota and Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin. The new span is wider than the old bridge and carries a concrete deck in place of steel grating.

Source: MPR News, Nov. 3

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