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Every number carries one of four labels (FACT, CALC, SAMPLE or PENDING) and a source you can open.
CDOTI-70 Floyd Hill Improvement Project
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CDOT · Transportation

I-70 Floyd Hill Improvement Project

Westbound third lane, new canyon viaduct & interchange rebuild (8 mi, Clear Creek County). Timeline 2023–2029.

Updated Sep 25

Money in FACT
Est. total cost
$905M

CALC Up 29.3% from $700M in 2020.

Formula: ($905M − $700M) ÷ $700M. First figure: 2020 CDOT estimate.

Result so far
Underway. What this stage means

Underway. The main work on this project started. Money goes out as the work goes on.

The stages, in order

  1. Requested An agency asked. No money yet.
  2. Funded Money approved. Work still to start.
  3. Underway Work started. Money goes out. This project
  4. Complete Work complete.

Halted Work stopped before the end.

This stage is our reading of the sources at the foot of this page, last read 31 October 2026.

Timeline 2023–2029

Paid so far CALC
$267.69M, through June 2026

CDOT’s dashboards print a paid figure for four of this project’s five contracts. Our sum: $62.04M + $55.27M + $106.52M + $43.86M = $267.69M. CDOT prints no total. Who is being paid, contract by contract

FACT A Honesty Framework The label says how we know the figure. The grade rates the source record, not the project. The grade rates the source record, not the project.

Your take on this project

How well does this project use public money?
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Your rating is stored without your name, address or any identifier. We count it into a total, so the people who govern this place can see how residents read their spending. No rating and no total is published on this site. We may publish summaries of what residents tell us about a place. Those are our own writing, never your rating and never a count, average or distribution of anybody's. Ratings and comments are grouped into themes that show elected leaders how residents rate each project.

Latest public update

CDOT's 2025 cost-to-deliver estimate is $905M, up from the 2020 estimate of $700M, citing construction and material costs. CDOT's monthly accountability dashboards cover the project's four construction contracts. They show $267.69M paid to the contractor by June 2026, against $678.15M in current contract value (our sums of the four contracts' figures). The fifth contract listed, for design, is not in those sums. June 2026 is the newest month all four dashboards report, as of 31 October 2026; two contracts have later months, which are not added.

Open questions for the state (3)
ANALYSIS
  • What are the specific cost drivers behind the rise from $700M (2020) to $905M (2025)?
  • Is the 2026 excavation season on track to hold the westbound 2027 opening?
  • CDOT's dashboards for the East and early-access sections stop at June 2026, while the West and Central sections reach August 2026. When will the other two catch up?

Total cost and spending
Total project cost$905M

Total cost & funding are drawn from the official record(s) listed below.

Paid to contractors: $267.69M of $678.15M in current contracts. CALC CDOT’s monthly dashboards print what has been paid to the contractor to date on four of this project’s five contracts. The two totals are our sums of those figures: $62.04M + $55.27M + $106.52M + $43.86M = $267.69M, and $64.13M + $105.23M + $459.31M + $49.48M = $678.15M. They are payments on those contracts, not the project’s whole spend: anything paid outside them is in neither figure, and nobody publishes that. CDOT’s latest published dashboard: June 2026.

Budget to actual

Public records tie $288,213,509 of payments to this project. That is 31.8% of the $905,000,000 basis: cDOT's 2025 cost to deliver the project as scoped.

  • Documented $288,213,509 31.8% of the basis

Each link is graded by how sure the record is. The other $616,786,491 is unlinked. Some of it may be unspent, and some may be paid where no public record names this project.

See every link and its evidence

Milestones (6)
  • Design & NEPA complete — 2021
  • Construction began — July 2023
  • Rock excavation & bridge structures — through 2026
  • Westbound new alignment open — end 2027
  • Eastbound alignment open — end 2028
  • Full completion — 2029

Estimate, first to current
FACT
first public estimate → current+$205M · +29%
2020 CDOT estimate → 2025 CDOT estimate$700M → $905M
Watchlist average drift+49% per project · +42% dollar-weighted
Both endpoints are drawn from the source records below; the change, percentage, and average are our arithmetic (CALC). The average covers the 3 of 53 tracked projects with two published estimates — for the rest, the state has published a single figure, so their drift is unknowable, not zero. Estimates move in both directions — we show the honest record either way.

Who is being paid (5)
FACT
Funding sourceState (SB 267 / Transportation Commission funds) plus federal INFRA/MEGA grants.
Political giving
Kraemer North AmericaCM/GC contract, East section (project 25174)$64.13M contractACDOT project pageSearch TRACER
Kraemer North AmericaCM/GC contract, West section (project 25175)$105.23M contractACDOT project pageSearch TRACER
Kraemer North AmericaCM/GC contract, Central section (project 25177)$459.31M contractACDOT project pageSearch TRACER
Kraemer North AmericaCM/GC contract, Central section early access (project 25176)$49.48M contractACDOT project pageSearch TRACER
Atkins North America (AtkinsRéalis)Lead design engineer — 6-year design contract (2022)$31M designPENDING Not published for this contract.Bcompany release / ENRSearch TRACER
Where this comes from: award announcements and project records from CDOT, FHWA, agencies and the legislature’s nonpartisan staff — each Record link opens the source. Paid-to-date shows only published figures (green = verified); everything else stays PENDING, because the state does not publish payments project by project. Political giving links open TRACER, the Secretary of State’s official campaign-finance database, where contribution records are searchable by name — contributions are legal and public, and a search link implies no wrongdoing by anyone.

Pacing CALC

Is the money keeping pace with the calendar?

All 4 contracts together, June 2026

▼ −7.9 percentage points, paid behind the calendar

Paid 39.5% of the combined contract value with 47.4% of the time used, weighted by value: 7.9 percentage points behind an even pace, $53.55M less.

An even pace is our baseline, not CDOT's plan. A gap is a question to ask, not a verdict, and it compares money with time, not with the work done.

See the spending, month by month

Money paid against contract time used, from CDOT's monthly dashboards, the latest each contract has.

  • East section, June 2026 Paid 96.7% of the contract with 97.4% of its time used: 0.6 percentage points behind an even pace, $0.40M less.
  • West section, August 2026 Paid 55.8% of the contract with 57.2% of its time used: 1.4 percentage points behind an even pace, $1.49M less.
  • Central section, early access, June 2026 Paid 88.6% of the contract with 97.6% of its time used: 9.0 percentage points behind an even pace, $4.44M less.
  • Central section, August 2026 Paid 26.9% of the contract with 37.7% of its time used: 10.8 percentage points behind an even pace, $49.68M less.

Figures in CDOT’s dashboards that do not add up

These are CDOT’s own figures, shown exactly as CDOT printed them, and we do not say which one is right.

None of these figures is used in a total, a chart or the pacing view on this site.

Sources and receipts (3)

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I-70 Floyd Hill Improvement Project

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