BurlOak
Senior Member
Good points.
This is also a downside with letting the lowest bidder to the engineering design of how the tunnel will be constructed, rather than designing it, and then letting the lowest bidder construct to a design. You increase the odds of a company doing a cheaper, but riskier, shortcut.
I would say the opposite. Unless they are incompetent, the lowest bidder for design will simply make a bunch of super expensive assumptions that drive up constructions costs. A engineering firm does not want the liability, they would much rather have the owner pay a huge amount extra to limit their own liability.
It is probably the Contractor (constructor) who will take the cheaper and riskier options since the money comes from (or savings go to) their own pockets. And if something does go wrong, they still have the ability to blame an ambiguous design so they may not be blamed for any mishap.