Illinois Tollway Settles Canceled Contract Lawsuit for $25 Million

A lawsuit brought against the Illinois Tollway earlier this year surrounding a terminated contract has come to an end.

The Illinois Tollway announced August 29 it had settled with Judlau Contracting for $25 million, over what Judlau called “abruptly and improperly terminating the contract.” Judlau had won a nearly $324 million contract to reconstruct and reconfigure the southbound side of the I-290/I-88 Interchange on the Central Tri-State Tollway, which the Tollway later canceled in May of this year.

The $25 million settlement covers construction costs of approximately $15 million already incurred by Judlau, and the Illinois Tollway stated it will pay Judlau’s subcontractors approximately $6.5 million for work they performed.

The Illinois Tollway will move forward on a new contract for the project with Walsh Construction II for the 2025 construction season.

In its press release, the Tollway acknowledged that errors were made in the bidding process that led to Judlau receiving the contract, saying the following:

“The Tollway contract, which involved roadway and bridge construction on the southbound side of the I-290/I-88 Interchange, was canceled because a relatively new provision in state law that provides a bid preference for companies based in Illinois was inadvertently excluded from the original contract bid evaluation. If the bid preference had been applied, the contract would have been awarded to Walsh Construction Company II.”

A description of the error is contained within a court filing from the Illinois Tollway and reads as follows:

"…Tollway bid review staff misunderstood the mandatory character of the 4% bid preference set forth in Section 45-105(e), as it is unlike other long-standing bid preferences, such as the preferences for Corn Based Plastics, Small Businesses or Environmentally Preferrable Supplies. As a result, although Walsh qualified for the Illinois business bid preference, the Tollway failed to allocate a 4% bid preference to Walsh’s bid when evaluating the bids it received in response to the solicitation for the Contract. Had the Tollway applied the bid preference to Walsh’s bid, Walsh’s net bid would have been $313,916,132.50, the Tollway would have identified Walsh as the apparent low bidder, and the Tollway would have sought to award the Contract to Walsh."

Judlau Contracting is the heavy civil construction division of OHLA USA, which is itself a division of international construction company OHLA Group, headquartered in Madrid, Spain. The company gave the following statement to Equipment World about the settlement:

“Judlau is satisfied with the settlement and notes that the Tollway did not terminate the contract as a result of any performance issues on the part of Judlau.”