City To Hire More Workers Due To Repair Backlog
The City is set to do some hiring in order to catch up on a growing problem of dozens of repairs needed in the waterworks utility. A repair backlog which has been growing for some time.
Repairs underway to service connection on 1200 block of 1st Avenue NW - MJ Independent Photo
In a notorious 4 - 3 vote Council decided to create a new waterworks crew as well as spend $500,000 to purchase a hydrovac truck.
The hiring would consist of moving six temporary City employees from 45 weeks of employment, until they are laid off on an annual basis, to permanent employee status and an additional hiring of six more permanent employees to make up the crew.
The new city crew would be tasked with helping to alleviate the growing backlog of 137 repairs to the waterworks system as well as perform preventative maintenance of the waterworks system.
The new crew would not be mobilized and ready to help to reduce the backlog of repairs until January - it should be noted the repairs are on-going.
Speaking on the issue city manager Jim Puffalt said funding for the new crew and hirings would come from cost savings from employing an in-house design team.
“This was a topic of the 2019 budget of almost a year ago when we talked about the potential to create an in-house design team and in essence spend the $500,000 we spend on cast iron external consulting engineers to be able to do in-house. Those cost savings we want to be able to create another construction team,” Puffalt said.
Puffalt said that once the proposed City team caught up on the growing backlog of 137 waterworks repairs they would be transitioned to a construction crew.
“There is lots of upside to this,” he said.
As part of the initiative Puffalt said Administration additionally wanted to reduce the down and travel time by having a construction bus. The construction bus would have a bathroom, serve as a place to warm up and breaks.
“As you know mobilization can take a lot of time in the day,” Puffalt saud, adding “we want to have a construction bus for want of a better term which would have the supplies that we need. That would have an opportunity for a warmup area. For a bathroom. All of these things that can help our people stay on site longer and work harder at the process.”
Puffalt said the proposed City crew could “be very competitive with private contractors” because unlike private contractors the City does not have to pay income tax and does not need to make a profit.
“Whatever cost savings we achieve we can plow back into the cast iron system either through repairs or new construction.”
Contractor equipment from Phase Four cast iron water main replacement on Main Street N in September 2019 - MJ Independent File Photo
Director of engineering Josh Mickleborough said the cost to this year's City budget was about $40,000.
“This backlog of failures is of course because of aging infrastructure…I believe within the existing capital and operating budgets we can hire the staff and increase the service to our residents,” Mickleborough said.
Funding for the $500,000 hydrovac truck the crew will need will come from the Engineering Department's equipment control account.
The hydrovac unit is necessary for a process called daylighting. Daylighting is a process of existing other underground infrastructure - utilities. Under provincial legislation all underground natural gas and electrical lines must be exposed in the work zone with a hydrovac or a shovel and not an excavator for safety reasons.
Councillor Brian Swanson spoke against the motion for a number of reasons.
The two most prominent were when the crew could actually get at the backlog - January - and the need to use any in-house cast iron design team savings on the proposed crew and not on the actual replacement of cast iron water mains.
Councillor Swanson noted the six temporary employees - who on average are employed 45 weeks annually until they are laid off in the Winter - will be eligible for three or four weeks holidays shortly after being moved from temporary to permanent status.
“So are we getting much more when we move these people to permanent given they are going to take holidays?” he asked.
“I do the math on that and they have 45 weeks now and we pay their holiday pay on cheques but we make them permanent and at most we will get 49 weeks.”
Director of Utilities Darrin Stephanson said the hirings had more to do with scheduling.
“Under the terms of our collective agreement right now these staff are laid off in a group which really shuts down the whole construction crew. Having a second crew allows us to spread this pain out over the year,” Stephanson said.
Asked by Councillor Swanson if it was safe to assume Winter repairs were more expensive than Summer repairs Stephanson replied “yeah they take a little bit more repair just breaking through the frost.”
Cast Iron pipe replaced on the 1200 block of 7th Avenue NW in Phase Three during the Summer of 2018 - MJ Independent File Photo
“This is a very interesting one here and also very expensive. What the City has is 137 waterworks jobs that are on backorder…I believe when it came to us in-camera a couple of months ago it was 125 so it is not shrinking,” Councillor Swanson said, adding “our water distribution system is at risk I have been making that point (for) a long time.”
He said there were two options before Council - hire and equip a new crew or contract the work out.
“The other option, which I support, is hiring independent contractors to do this work for us. We have a significant backlog of work to be done. When we first appraised of this to months ago and the negotiations to get this into effect take time.”
“I think in those discussions this crew would need to get up to speed in January which would be to me the absolute worst time of the year to start undertaking significant water distribution upgrades. I would think that the last two months would have been optimal because Simmer work is cheaper than Winter work,” Councillor Swanson said.
Councillor Swanson said he did not agree with the in-house construction crew being cheaper than contractors.
“The entire argument on this crew is they are going to be cheaper because we don't pay income tax, we don't have to make a profit and I don't buy that argument.”
“Because if you buy that argument everything should be done by government because they don’t have to pay income tax and they don’t have to make a profit. And everything would be better if done by government”
He said he knew of one resident who was quoted $14,000 by the City and a private contractor did the work for $5,490.
Councillor Swanson questioned the validity of Administration’s report and recommendations to Council.
“I have to believe the private contractor is $150 to $200 an hour more expensive than the City crew and the maintenance and depreciation of equipment and I cannot say I agree with that.”
He said with the contractors not being “as busy as they would like to be” that contractors could be attacking the 137 job backlog at the present time and get it done cheaper than in the Winter.
A third concern for Councillor Swanson had was not using the $500,000, saved on consulting fees by having an in-house design team, on actual cast iron water main replacement. His reasoning was the City was replacing 2,200 metres annually when they needed to average 4,000 metres annually in order to replace the 80,000 metres in 20 years.
“If we are going to save $500,000 that $500,000 should be used to lay more cast iron water main pipe.”
“I saw the last water mains breaks report 97 compared to 65 at the same time last year. That is a 45 percent increase in breaks. The system is not getting better quickly. We need to enhance the cast iron water main budget not take money from it to fund operating costs.”
Councillor Swanson said if the City were to fund the increase to the waterworks crew through taxes the actual tax increase would be 6 25 percent. The entire initiative was being sold as savings within the cast iron water main replacement program which is already underfunded, he said.
“If there are efficiencies found by designing cast iron water mains in-house that should mean we lay more cast iron water main pipe not funding operating budget expenditures,” he said.
Councillor Chris Warren said he supported the motion because it helped build expertise which had already proven to reduce the average costs of water main repairs. Additionally the experience and expertise could later be transferred to other capital projects.
We will “be able to transfer all of this work (and expertise) all across all of our capital projects as the report shows,” Councillor Warren said.
“We have shown the number of repairs have increased substantially over the years from 200 in 2014 to 314 in 2018. So we are doing more,” he said. “With all of that work we have been doing internally and expertise we have basically dropped our costs for excavation in half.”
The average was $22,000 to $23,000 in 2014 to $12,000 to $13,000 now, he said.
“We have seen a substantial increase in the amount of work we can get done in a year and we have also seen a substantial decrease in the cost of that work based upon the knowledgeability, expertise and experience gained doing that work”
Councillor Warren spoke about the point where the replacement of cast iron water mains would catch up to and drop the number of repairs. The most recent estimate is five years.
“It has always been understood it was going to take some investment and time to get over that curve in terms of failures versus the renewal of the infrastructure. We are getting there.”
“We are still seeing some major breaks but we are getting closer to that tip of the iceberg,” he said.
Another major reason why creating a second crew would be beneficial because they would allow a better preventative maintenance program, Councillor Warren said.
“We are maximizing the life of infrastructure and minimizing the repairs needed…we are now seeing a backlog of these preventative maintenance activities taking place.”
Cast Iron Water Main Replacement on Main Street - MJ Independent File Photo
Councillor Heather Eby said she had it in her notes the number of breaks was 134 more than the 125 Councillor Swanson said they were told at an in-camera meeting.
“We are not gaining any ground on this until we make some changes,” Councillor Eby said in voicing her support for the motion, adding “we know we have to do things differently to get results.”
She said the numbers do not reflect the human reality the backlog in repairs was creating.
“We hope in a year from now we get a report there there has been a significant decrease in the backlog. When we hear about 137 and just think on it as a note on someone's pad in Engineering it is not just a number it is real people without water,” Councillor Eby said with many hooked up to their neighbour's home and unable to do such things as take a shower if their neighbour is doing laundry.
“I don't think that is realistic this is a long term problem and we need to get ahead of it.”
Puffalt said the estimated cost for contractors to take the backlog was 966,000 annually - $773,000 circa crew and $250,000 for a hydrovac. With doing the work with just straight contractors costing the City an additional $466,000.
Councillor Swanson said he would require more evidence to prove the City had become 40 percent more efficient since 2014 given rising labour, equipment and material costs.
He once again pointed out close to two months of prime excavation repair time was lost since the true extent of the backlog was reported to Council in-camera.
In a recorded vote Mayor Fraser Tolmie, Councillors Crystal Froese, Warren and Eby were in favour and Councillors Dawn Luhning, Scott McMann and Swanson were opposed.