MONTREAL - All five consortia aiming to score massive contracts to rebuild the Turcot Interchange received some good news Wednesday: they are all still in the running.
The bad news, of course, was that none of their candidates was eliminated either.
Last year the government vowed to shave the list of five down to three by this stage.
Turcot New Consortium (including Spanish giant Ferrovial), Future Group Turcot (SNC-Lavalin and Louisbourg Construction), New Turcot Interchange Group (Pomerleau, Verreault, Dessau and Roche), KPH Turcot (Kiewit, Parsons and Genivar) and Turcot Renewal Partnership (Dexter, OHL and SM) are all still hoping to reap big contracts.
Karla Duval, a representative from Infrastructure Quebec said that the government is still keeping all candidates in the running in the hopes of further encouraging competition among the five.
Duval said that all five satisfied the technical and financial criteria required by the government to be able to build the new highway structures.
Since the process started several of the parties involved have had inglorious moments.
SNC-Lavalin suffered a series of scandals while Louisberg plead guilty to tax evasion in 2010 and Genivar recently confessed to making about $525,000 in false invoices to disguise illegal political donations.
The province aims to rebuild the interchange by 2020 at a cost of $3.7 billion.
The project has been widely criticized by those seeking a more public-transit oriented project, and others seeking a lower-cost approach, which could be possible with a rehabilitation of the current structures.
-With a file from The Canadian Press
