HDR last year agreed to pay $12 million to design-build contractor Archer Western-de Moya Group to settle claims the engineer had incompletely designed and misdesigned. Miami’s new Signature Bridge when the joint venture committed to a fixed price prior to construction in 2018.
As part of the settlement of the negligence, gross negligence and breach of contract lawsuit, Archer Western-de Moya released $30 million in fees it had been withholding from the Omaha-based engineer.
The 2024 settlement ended the joint venture’s lawsuit in Miami federal court against HDR, first filed in 2022. Because the judge ruled out gross negligence, HDR would not be liable for more than the $10 million limit on its professional liability policy with Berkley Assurance Co.
HDR said in a statement that the legal issues “were mutually resolved more than a year ago and are considered closed. Our focus remains on supporting our partners, customers and the citizens of Miami in delivering this signature bridge.”
But a new legal front opened several months after the HDR deal in April 2025, when Archer Western-de Moya filed a new lawsuit in Miami federal court against key insurers for HDR. The contracting joint venture accused the excess policy insurers of refusing to pay the global settlement of the lawsuit.
Its funds were needed, Archer Western-de Moya argued in the new lawsuit, because HDR’s $10 million in insurance coverage had been used up in the earlier lawsuit. Therefore, excess insurance policies, which typically kick in when primary layers of coverage are exhausted, would have to pay amounts owed by HDR above $10 million and for more extensive damages sustained by Archer Western-de Moya.
In total, Archer Western-de Moya claimed it incurred additional costs related to the alleged HDR errors totaling about $400 million.
Excess insurers, four or five separate corporate entities, are pulling back.
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In a motion to dismiss many of the charges against them, they argue that the terms of any coverage for economic loss caused to others require arbitration. They also claim that Archer Western-de Moya had not yet complied with all provisions of the policy, including those that apply to rectification coverage to fix work related to alleged HDR errors. And they argue that Archer Western-de Moya’s legal fees are not covered by the policy.
An attorney for Archer-Western-de Moya could not immediately be reached for comment.
The controversies are the latest involving a major design-build infrastructure project.
Over budget and behind schedule
Over budget and behind schedule, the projected completion date for the $866 million Miami Signature Bridge project is now 2029, years ahead of the original 2024 goal that Archer Western-de Moya was aiming for in 2019. That’s when the joint venture began construction on the single-span bridge and interstate reconstruction project.
The effort to build the unusual structure has been compared to a “detailed battle”. Unlike more standard prefabricated segmental bridges, the vast majority of the 345 prefabricated segments of the arches are so different from each other that it was almost impossible for a prefab manufacturer to standardize their construction.
But until recently, what had been described as a purely technical and physical challenge to build the unusual structure was not understood to include a legal conflict in the design and construction team. The design-build team’s disputes had been featured in legal news services, but only emerged into wider public view in a local television report in February.
Archer Western-de Moya, in its lawsuit in federal court in Miami, had blamed HDR for the project’s additional costs based primarily on the allegation that HDR had failed to calculate wind loads, including drag coefficients, a quantity that relates wind pressure on an object to its size and wind speed, on the unusual arched bridge structure. In the Archer Western-de Moya lawsuit, the joint venture claimed HDR failed to hire a wind engineering consultant early enough for the information to be considered in preparing a guaranteed maximum price for the Florida Department of Transportation.
FDOT pays for the bridge but not the related approach roads.
In its lawsuit against the insurers filed a year ago, Archer Western-de Moya claims the contract documents it signed with HDR required the engineer to complete key design criteria, including wind loads, when securing the final price with FDOT.
“HDR did not engage its wind consultant, RWDI USA, LLC, until August 2018, after the JV had executed the design-build contract” and with the design theoretically completed at the 60% level, Archer Western-de Moya alleged.
In December of that year, HDR informed Archer Western-de Moya that the wind calculations had changed, the contractor claimed. By the time FDOT approved HDR’s proposed changes, months had been lost on the project schedule, dramatically increasing the cost.
But HDR had a story to tell.
He claimed in response to Archer Western-De Moya that the joint venture, without informing HDR, had cut to 341 days what HDR believed to be a necessary and agreed 608-day schedule for the design. Further, HDR charged, the joint venture began unilaterally making changes to the bridge’s foundation and arch erection methods.
“There is no dispute end Wind load calculations were performed during design development in Phase II to complete the end design,” argued the engineer, and that the preliminary wind loads used were purely for preliminary design.
In its counterclaim against Archer Western-de Moya, HDR sought $48 million in retained fees and additional out-of-pocket costs.
The federal judge in the case made a landmark decision in January 2025, saying HDR’s actions did not amount to gross negligence. If gross rather than simple negligence had been involved, the limit of the limitation of liability of the engineer’s insurance policy might have been exceeded.
With that ruling, Archer Western-de Moya was prevented from immediately collecting any money beyond the $10 million limit because HDR’s legal defense costs in the suit had already burned through all $10 million of its insurance.
This set the stage for Archer Western-de Moya and HDR to negotiate a deal.
