3720 - Board of Claims

II. UTILITY POLE RELOCATION ISSUES
Pre-Contract Activity
As with all significant construction projects, PennDOT road rehabilitation and widening
projects are typically preceded by extensive design work and planning well before any actual
construction work begins. In fact, much of the necessary design and planning, including plan
approvals and permitting, occurs before the project is put out for bid or any contracts are
awarded. One of these critical pre-construction activities on a roadway reconstruction/widening
project, such as the one here at issue, is to plan for utility pole relocation, as needed, to build the
project on time and as designed. To accomplish this, PennDOT has created within its Bureau of
Design a Utility Relocation Unit. This Unit operates on a more local level through district
Utilities Relocation Administrators. The district utility relocation units are comprised of one or
more PennDOT employees whose job is to plan ahead and make appropriate arrangements with
utility companies about moving their poles and facilities so that road construction projects can be
completed on time.
In the present case, three utility companies (also referred to herein as the "Utilities") had
poles and wires in the construction area of the SR 2001 Project. During the approximate two
year period before actual work on the Project site began, the Utility Relocation Administrator for
District 4-0 sent each local utility company a preliminary set of PennDOT's plans and drawings
for the Project identifying which utility facilities would have to be relocated. In return,
PennDOT received from each utility company a list of new poles to replace those needed to be
moved, along with work time estimates to relocate these poles.
In approximately
November/December 1999, the telephone utility, G.T.E. of Pennsylvania ("G.T.E."), notified
PennDOT it would need sixty days to relocate its wires and poles for the Project. The electric
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