WESTLOCK - The Town of Westlock will spend an additional $60,000 on its Aquatic Centre drainage rehabilitation project due to “unforeseen works” encountered by the contractor during excavation.
Council voted 7-0 to up the project budget from $255,000 to $316,000, which is the second time this year it’s ballooned. At their May 25 meeting councillors agreed to increase the budget from $165,000 to $255,000, which is a figure that included $8,100 for an AIC Plate Exchanger.
“If it needs to be done, it needs to be done,” said Coun. John Shoemaker, who made the motion to amend the budget.
Mayor Ralph Leriger concurred, noting while the budget has increased, it is still less than what other contractors bid on the project initially.
“We’ve been working hard on an asset management plan that will give us 30 more years of life for that facility. And we know you have to spend money on these places if you want them to live out their life cycle,” said Leriger after the meeting.
“And we also know there were issues during construction on that facility 30 years ago — if you looked in the Westlock News from 30 years ago, you’d find some articles on issues with construction.
“We know that some budget estimates are going to be closer than other ones based on the information they have at time and the time in which they have to prepare it. And when you dig things up and find things that you didn’t know where there … it’s a disappointment, but it’s not a surprise.
“At the end of the day what I need to know from my guy is if the fix is the right one and are we doing the right thing. If it costs a little more money because of X, Y, Z and those are legitimate costs then I can live with it.”
In the request for decision to council, director of operations Grant Gyurkovits listed off five issues that led to the cost overrun. The additional $61K will come from the provincial Municipal Sustainability Initiative Capital Grant program and Gyurkovits said this project, once finally done, should solve drainage issues at the site.
“My apologies for walking this in at the last moment but I couldn’t get my numbers … my conversation with the prime contractor took a little longer than we figured,” said Gyurkovits.
Detailing the overrun, Gyurkovits noted that the building’s two-metre extensions located at its corners and near the service line meant additional excavations and added materials.
“There was a lot of extra excavation that was done … these unknowns were not originally available to us when we were putting together the cost of the project,” said Gyurkovits.
Poor slope stabilization was second on the list — after the initial excavation the trench started to cave in, which became a safety issue. Ultimately, more equipment had to be called in to do additional digs.
Third up was the secondary gas line that runs from the meter to the south side of the building. After digging, the slope changed, leading to additional hydro-vac costs and lost time for contractor.
Finally, a roof access structure was removed as part of the contract, but they had no idea there was a sub structure beneath. That roof access structure will now be re-installed — the town and MPE have not come to an agreement on it, so that work will be done by a local contractor, while MPE will provide the structural design plans free of charge.
