Council Approves Additional Funds To Service Industrial Park

A highly complex and complicated major watermain servicing project just got a little bit more expensive as Council agreed to change order for their engineering contractor to bring water to the new South East Industrial or Agri-Food Park.

Council unanimously agreed to a scope change to pay ISL Engineering an additional maximum $206,800 - with the City’s share being $60,040 - to bring the major watermain to the SaskPower natural gas fired generating station.

The $206,800 change order moves the total approved engineering contractor agreement to $808,251.35 from the original budget of $371,966. An additional $229,485.35 in engineering related change orders were previously approved for the project.

The City is responsible for 30 percent of the additional costs with the other 70 percent borne by SaskPower.

The work is being done as part of the land sales agreement on the provision of services to the SaskPower natural gas fired generator site. SaskPower is paying 70 percent of the costs of the 16 inch water line as their power plant only needs a 12 inch line. The extra capacity will be used to supply new plants the City is hoping to attract to the now re-named Agri-Foods Industrial Park.

Hamm Construction, the main contractor, working on Fairford Street East late Thursday afternoon - MJ Independent photo

City engineer Bevan Harlton explained the reasons behind the change order request stating that ISL had done exceptional work so far on the project. ISL is responsible for the design, tender, construction and inspection of installing the major watermain from Fairford Street to the new industrial park adjacent the City’s sewage treatment plant.

“For something of this size ISL has taken on a lot of additional services and not applied any overhead to the services,” Harlton said. “A company that has done very well on this project so far and have done a lot of additional coordinating.”

Harlton said the $206,800 scope change is a result of “the rail crossings, contamination and issues related to the SaskTel duct.”

Before presenting the reason behind the change order Harlton said he wanted to clarify the contamination aspect in the report to Council and that is there was nothing unexpected and none found.

“During the preliminary design we did 15 test holes throughout the alignment to understand what was going on in the soil and to conform if there was any contamination,” he said, adding “so what we are finding on the site is nothing unexpected. It has nothing to do with any active operations with anyone. It is a historical occurrence that is being addressed through normal construction processes.”

The route of the main water feeder line will not only originate on Fairford Street East but once going under the underpass will cross the Moose Jaw River and then across lands part of the Gibson Energy Refinery that were used by the former refinery ownership for their operations.

The lands are contaminated but the contamination is no longer on-going. As part of their responsibility ISL had to monitor the work in the areas of potential contamination being present for every load of soil removed as well as other parts of the work.

“There is no report of contamination (in the report to Council) as there is no contamination we are aware of,” Harlton said. “The reason it was included in the report is because of a lot extra work that went to ISL for managing that work and still it is on-going.”

The City’s engineer also added “Gibson’s has monitoring wells throughout that location and throughout their adjacent batteries. They are good stewards to their work.”

There was a surprise in the construction with a SaskTel duct bank discovered during the digging of a sanitary (sewer) main. The duct bank was previously unknown necessitating in the end a redesigned to move the sanitary alignment.

This route was chosen as the alternative was removing the previously unknown duct bank adding an additional six to seven weeks to the project which is set to be completed entirely by the end of September to mid-October in order to fit into SaskPower’s generating plant construction schedule.

“There is a lot of work there, there are a lot of moving parts…there was a time when we had three contractors going and Hamm doing underground cuts. They were going full-time and then some on a very expedited construction project, Harlton said.

Additional flagging costs - the cost of having CN and CP employees on site due to active train operations - is yet to be determined with both railways yet to bill the project. Because of this ISL asked for a maximum amount in the change order to cover these costs.

If the charges are less than the anticipated and estimated amounts the funds will not be spent on the flagging and other aspects of the project.

Harlton wanted to emphasize that the East Feeder Main project took six construction seasons and only installed 3.8 kilometers of line whereas the project being worked on now is putting in 2.3 kilometers in just one construction season.

“There are a lot of moving parts on a very active and a very important project.”

Despite the increased costs the reasons given were acceptable to Council.

Councillor Jamey Logan said he saw no problem with the costs being asked for and they were fixed costs “that were no starters for argument with any of these the way I see it.”

“There are a lot of moving parts anytime you are in the ground and for people to say, and I have heard maybe around this table here, how do you not know what is in the ground quite frankly there was no such thing as as-builts many years ago.”

As-builts are additional work done which are later surveyed or drawn into plans to show the location of additional work added to the main work.

Councillor Dawn Luhning asked about whether or not the additional costs were agreeable to SaskPower.

Harlton said SaskPower was aware and part of the on-going construction meetings.

“We include SaskPower in our construction meetings. We just decided it was the most transparent method to run this project with SaskPower,” he said.

Council approved the additional spending unanimously 6 - 0.