Kiewit's Weeks Marine Gets $88M Hudson Tunnel Change Order
The Gateway Development Commission has approved an $88 million change order for Kiewit subsidiary Weeks Marine to remove roughly 500 submerged wooden piles from the Hudson River, Construction Dive reports, ahead of tunnel boring machines starting work in 2028.
Market Impact
The change order builds on the existing Hudson River Ground Stabilization contract and expands the work zone by about 265 feet toward Manhattan. Crews will pull remaining piles left behind from the demolition of Pier 68, then mix lightweight concrete into the riverbed soil to firm it up before boring machines pass through. GDC expects the work to start later this year and wrap before the 2028 boring start date.
Weeks Marine, based in Cranford, New Jersey, is already mobilized on the river and pulled a small number of piles in 2025 to scope out the removal process. GDC Chief of Program Delivery Jim Starace told the agency’s July 8 board meeting that lessons from that early work are shaping the new scope, including the need to operate inside a cofferdam to guard against strong Hudson River currents, the risk of piles breaking during extraction, and the need to reinforce soil around removed piles to fill voids left behind. GDC CEO Tom Prendergast called the change order proof of the agency’s approach to “identification of risks that you will foresee, mitigating those risks and taking actions to make sure that you’ve done as many of the mitigations as possible.”
The original ground stabilization scope covered a 1,200-foot-long, 100-foot-wide section of riverbed, with work underway since 2024 and progressing eastward toward Manhattan.
What It Means for Subcontractors
- Marine construction subs with pile-extraction and cofferdam experience should expect Weeks Marine to be staffing up for mobilization later this year, ahead of the 2028 boring start.
- Ground improvement and soil stabilization crews familiar with lightweight concrete injection into riverbed soil are directly relevant to the added scope, since that work is now folded into the existing Hudson River Ground Stabilization contract rather than bid separately.
- Firms with experience working inside cofferdams under high-current conditions have a specific technical edge here, since GDC flagged that requirement explicitly based on 2025 pile-removal lessons.
- Subcontractors tracking the broader Hudson Tunnel Project pipeline should note GDC already awarded a separate $711 million contract in June 2026, a sign more subcontract packages are likely to follow as the project moves toward the 2028 boring milestone.
