Work is going ahead on the next phase of repairs to the Memorial Sports Centre roof.
During last week’s meeting of town council, a tender was awarded to Se7en Hills Inc. for the project, which will involve continuing work on the Sports Centre roof that was begun with design work in 2020 and the first phase completed in 2021.
In discussion among council regarding the tender, some concerns were expressed with the total cost provided by Se7en Hills, with coun. Steven Maki noting that the submitted application comes in significantly below the costs provided by other applicants. In the report provided to council by town operations and facilities manager Travis Rob, the price for the tender submitted by Se7en Hills is $779,950, including contingency allowance, exclusive of HST. Each of the remaining bidders on the project was in excess of $1.2 million, with the most expensive bid coming in at $2.2 million.
According to transportation superintendent Cody Vangel, while Se7en Hills’ submitted bid is lower than the others the town received for the same scope of work, administration has researched to ensure that they are capable of delivering on the project, and they will be held responsible for their work.
“We went through the competitive bidding process, following our procurement policy, with the set of engineered specs, documentation and drawings,” Vangel explained.
“Each of the contractors had the same bid documents and specifications to review and prepare their bids in accordance with. In doing so, we do have one bid that is certainly lower than the rest, that’s something we do receive by getting this kind of outreach. I know our manager of operations and facilities has reached out to Se7en Hills just to review and kind of vet the products and work methodology that they plan to use for the project, and he feels confident with what he’s hearing from them. So ultimately, we are looking to recommend moving forward with Se7en Hills. They will have contractual obligations through the construction project, including engineering inspections and site visits, as well as technical reporting of their materials that they do plan to use throughout the construction project.”
Coun. Mike Behan noted that the cost for the project has grown beyond what was forecast for the roof replacement project, and sought some clarification on the report, which noted that other work remaining on the project will be adjusted to align with remaining funding. Vangel and Rob noted that the overall project was built up of more than 30 smaller projects in order to access funding to do the work, and with the funding originally being set more than 5 years ago, overages have occurred, leading administration to focus on the most important remaining work first.
“So we’ve got 32 projects in total that made up this one large project and grant,” Rob said.
“We’ve been working through the 32 projects over the last four or five years. So we’re kind of down to the last year now, and we’re really focused on the most impactful of those 32 projects
