The wait for a brand new stretch of road and underground services along Centre Street North is almost over.
"So the long-awaited Centre Street tender has been completed," operations manager Jim Hall told council during a special meeting held late on the afternoon of July 13.
Following the required two-week tender period, seven contractors bid on the major infrastructure project that will involve not only repaving the road from Sixth Avenue to 12th Avenue, but also replacing all of the underground services, including stormwater drainage.
"There were site meetings with five of those seven individual companies at Centre Street to look the project over," said Hall.
The municipality's engineering firm, CIMA, ended up recommending approving the bid submitted by a contracting firm called AIC Construction Ltd., "as they've come in with the price and experience to do the work," he said.
The two-phase capital project, which had previously been approved by council at an estimated cost of about $2.2 million, is expected to be mostly completed by the end of October, although landscaping and other finishing touches will be completed next year during the second phase.
Coun. Chris Vardas chaired the meeting in the absence of Mayor Terry Leslie. Also unable to attend the afternoon meeting was Coun. Nolan Blatchford. Councillors Cheri Funke, Paul Isaac, Verna McFadden and Myron Thompson were all present, creating a sufficient quorum to carry a motion.
To initiate discussion on the matter, Thompson moved the recommended action for the municipality to accept AIC Construction's bid of about $1.4 million plus a contingency of 10 per cent amounting to about $145,000, plus five per cent GST for roughly $80,000 to complete the first phase of Centre Street North's reconstruction.
"I have one quick question," said Vardas.
"Why did the tender take so long, and are we behind on tendering, are we still getting qualified people for this?"
Tenders for such projects generally go out in the spring when quality contractors fill up their year quickly, he said.
"So why are we so late?"
The delay largely stemmed from designing the storm drainage. Such systems are very difficult to engineer because of the grades involved, said Hall.
"There's no pumping, it's all basically gravity fed. So there's some very slight sloping, and we have to connect into that," he explained.
The engineering firm was pushed hard to complete the work, and when the drawings were finished, a review process yielded some mistakes that had to be corrected, he added.
"They wanted to make sure it was done right."
Additionally, there are at least 12-14 weeks left in the construction season, and as big as the sum of money involved is, the project is fairly straightforward, he said.
"They can do about 100 metres of pipe a day, and it's 800 metres."
Once the underground infrastructure upgrades are complete, the repaving will get underway, he said.
"Engineering feels confident, and operations feels confident, that we should be able to meet the deadline ó and the contractor is held to that deadline ó of October 31."
Finally, in terms of having a qualified and experienced contractor doing the job, Hall told council he is pleased with the tender presented by AIC.
"They've done a lot of work for us, and they're top-notch."
Vardas also inquired whether any local contractors bid on the project.
"I do not know of any local (companies) within the region," said Hall.
"I will say that AIC has roots in the local economy and the local area."
Without any further comments or questions, council went on to unanimously carry the motion on the table.
Now that the contract has been awarded, work is anticipated to be underway in the coming week, Hall told the Round Up last Friday.
