A contractor could be named as early as Friday to repair a section of Washington Street south of the Washington Street bridge.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen Monday received bids from three construction companies, voting 2-0 to take them under advisement and let representatives from IMS Engineering, the project engineer, review the proposals.

Mayor Paul Winfield did not attend the meeting. He is in Shanghai, China, attending an international seminar as part of the executive MBA he is taking at Tulane University, according to information from Tulane. The cost of the trip was included in his tuition.

Representatives from IMS will examine the bids from Dirt Works of Vicksburg, $232,600; American Field Service of Madison, $203,536; and Riverside Construction of Vicksburg, $242,204. They are expected to make their recommendation when the board meets Friday.

The board declared an emergency Feb. 28 and restricted traffic on Washington Street south of the bridge after a city crew repairing a water leak near a retaining wall saw it move as heavy trucks went by, adding there was a gap between the wall and the slope.

When the emergency was declared, the board ordered that vehicles weighing more than 26,001 pounds, which includes tractor-trailer rigs, log trucks, school buses and large emergency vehicles, be detoured from the street.

The board on April 26 transferred $265,000 from the city’s recreation department to the street department to pay for the repairs.

Saradhi Balla of IMS said April 16 that the repairs are expected to take about 45 days. He said the project involves reinforcing the retaining wall and repairing a section of the street south of the bridge.

He said street repairs involve replacing 10 paved panels on the street and repairing the roadbed, adding the street was uneven from moisture under the road.

The street was paved with 10- by 20-foot concrete sections, or pallets.

Balla said the retaining wall will be braced by about 30 anchors installed horizontally and vertically in the ground and against the wall to keep it from moving. He said the wall is structurally sound.

The problem with the street was discovered shortly after the new bridge, which had been closed for three years for construction, was reopened to traffic. City officials have said the problem with the wall, which was built in 1929 when the bridge was built or the early 1930s, is not related to the bridge.

The Washington Street bridge was closed in 2009 while Kansas City Southern Railway and Kanza Construction Co. of Topeka, Kan., replaced the bridge with a concrete bridge atop a railroad tunnel.