Eastside Corridor Constructors’ joint venture team has been tipped to win the main contract for the SR 520 Eastside Transit and HOV Project in Washington, US, after offering the best value proposal.

The ECC’s bid of $306.3m was $116m less than the state’s $422m estimate for the design-build project.

WSDOT will award the contract within a few weeks, while construction will commence in early 2011.

The companies in the joint venture include Granite Construction and PCL Construction Services.

Proposals were also submitted to the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) by two other joint venture teams of Skanska-Flatiron and Kiewit-Atkinson.

The contract includes widening the SR 520 corridor and building new transit and carpool lanes, shoulders and other facilities along 2.5 miles of SR 520 in Bellevue and constructing three landscaped lids over SR 520.

The state legislature set the SR 520 programme budget at $4.65bn for improvements from I-5 in Seattle to SR 202 in Redmond.