News Roundup

New Orleans Hires Firm For To Oversee 1B In Recovery

BayouBuzz
January 10, 2008
Written by: BayouBuzz Staff

New Orleans—Mayor C. Ray Nagin today announced an agreement that he says will continue to accelerate the pace at which the City can undertake rebuilding projects of nearly one billion dollars, approximately one third being roads and streets.

In an competitive bid process, Mayor Nagin awarded MWH firm which is an international firm with over 7000 employees worldwide.

The agreement will provide services to manage and expedite the repair and reconstruction of police and fire stations, streets, recreation centers, court buildings, museums, libraries, parks and other projects.

Nagin said that after two years of strategic work to plan and generate funds for recovery, the City has embarked on the most massive rebuilding project in our nation’s history.

Nagin said that their were many hurdles the City had to jump over which included putting together a City plan, hiring a recovery Manager in Dr. Edward Blakely, cleaning up the debris and dealing with the basic infrastructure and securing money to proceed with many of the projects outlined in a press conference today.

Dr. Blakely said that there were approximately 18 companies involved in the competitive bid and MWH was selected from three companies.

MWH will advise and assist the City in overseeing the assessment, rehabilitation and strategic improvement of the City buildings and infrastructure damaged due to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

When asked why an outside firm was needed, Nagin said that the scope of the work was unprecedented and Dr. Blakely said that MWH would actually be training the City in various areas of operations.