MAJOR PROGRAMS: Portal North Bridge Project is Progressing, but Opportunities Exist to Improve Company Oversight and Reduce Risk

Our objective was to assess the company’s efforts to support New Jersey Transit (NJ Transit) and oversee company interests as construction advances.

We found that the project is both on budget and on schedule, as of January 2024, but we also found that the company has opportunities to improve its support to NJ Transit, the lead sponsor of the project, and better oversee its own interests. Specifically, it did not anticipate the demand for track outages and company labor, it had differing expectations with NJ Transit related to information sharing, and it did not initially staff its project team to effectively manage its work on the project.

We recommend improvements to the company’s process for identifying outage, labor, and information needs at the outset of future projects. Further, for the Portal North Bridge project, we recommend that the company assess and address where information-sharing expectations may continue to vary with NJ Transit.