North Battleford city council at Monday's meeting. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

Within contingency

City sanitary sewer trunk upgrade project sees another increase

Feb 14, 2023 | 2:25 PM

The City of North Battleford’s large-scale primary sanitary sewer trunk upgrade project is experiencing another cost increase.

City director of operations Stewart Schafer gave an update on the project at this week’s council meeting.

Schafer reported the contract for AECOM Canada Ltd., hired to do the engineering work for the sanitary force main sewer system project and sewage pumping station, asked for an increase due to unforeseen costs it experienced.

City administration recommended council approve the request from AECOM to increase the engineering service contract price by an additional $46,640 including PST, thus increasing the total contract cost to $1,290,902 for AECOM’s services.

Schafer said the cost is still within the original estimate anticipated.

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He noted the project managers, KGS Group, confirmed the extra cost is justifiable.

The increase reflects an extension of the construction schedule and some construction inspection timeline inefficiencies related to having multiple contracts underway.

“We had a few contracts going at the same time, … on the inspections,” Schafer said. “One contractor [had] an inspection done before the other one.”

He noted there was some overlap of inspections, which caused some delays.

Schafer said the $46,000 extra is on top of the last increase of up to $90,000 for the engineering service contract =approved by council in June of 2022 .

He noted the added sum is still within the leeway amount estimated for any contingency costs for the entire project.

“We’re getting close… but it’s still within there,” Schafer said.

The majority of council voted in favour of the increase.

Coun. Bill Ironstand questioned the added cost, saying this is the second time this type of request has come to council for increases from the contractor, and voted against the recommendation.

“The contractor is still costing us even more money,” he said. “They want to babysit the contractor and we’re going to pay for it again, right.”

Coun. Greg Lightfoot said he understands that with a large project there can be some hurdles and voted in favour.

“It’s frustrating to see the additional costs come in,” he said. “There is always going to be hiccups with a project this size, I can understand that. As long as they are within our contingency.”

Coun. Kelli Hawtin also voted in favour of the increase.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got to get this project done, and we’ve got to get it done properly with proper oversight,” she said.

Schafer said the multi-year project is expected to wrap up in April.

He said overall for a project of this size and value, the amount of changes it has seen has not been significant.

“We’ve only had about seven changes,” Schafer said. “That’s very small compared to some of the other major projects that we’ve had… So, we’re quite happy with the way the project is going.”

The total estimate of the entire project sits at about $16.86 million, which also includes contingency costs. The federal and provincial governments are each contributing one-third of funding based on the original estimate of roughly $13.65 million for the project, through the New Building Canada Fund Program. The city is responsible for its share and any overages.

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow