Washroom woes

Roblin Lake Park washroom project has had its share of troubles

It was supposed to be a quick, simple project. A washroom to replace one that had been damaged by a fire in May of 2017. The construction of a new washroom and change room facility located in the Roblin Lake Park was tendered the following year, in May of 2018. The contract was awarded to Standard Paving Ltd—the same contractor who completed the repair work on the Wellington Park retaining wall. The schedule submitted with the tender documents by the contractor stated a 16-week construction period commencing on or about July 15, 2018. The project has yet to be completed, and the contractor has submitted a new final completion date of July 3, 2019.

HOW WE GOT HERE
A request for quotation was issued on July 20, 2017 for the design of the new facility. The RFQ closed in August of 2017 with no bid submissions. When the municipality inquired with local companies, it determined that most were simply too busy to take on the work or that the scope was simply too small to justify shifting priorities. The decision was made to issue a Design-Build Tender to create more interest. A request for Tender was issued for the design and build of the new facility. The RFT closed and only one bid submission was received, which was later disqualified for not meeting the requirements of the tender documents. The County began contacting individual companies seeking an expression of interest for the design of the facility. A total of 17 different companies were contacted, but only one EOI was received, which was awarded on March 23, 2017. The design phase was completed and an RFT for construction with the completed design included was issued in May of 2018. The project was awarded to the low bidder, Standard Paving Ltd., on July 24, 2018.

Before a building permit could be issued for the facility, an approved septic design needed to be established. Standard Paving Ltd. was responsible for the septic design and obtaining a septic permit from the County’s building department. In order for the contractor to complete the septic design, information regarding the existing septic bed was needed. The contractor requested the missing information from the County. The County encountered delays with supplying the information, and a decision was made to issue a conditional building permit prior to the finalization of the septic design in an effort to move forward with construction. All of the information regarding the existing septic bed was then given to the contractor and the septic design has since been finalized, but the contractor has only submitted a partial application for the septic permit and therefore the permit has not yet been issued.

The contractor commenced the footing excavation in late October. During the excavation, the contractor discovered material from the destroyed facility had been used when backfilling the building footprint. The material needed to be removed and replaced with clean fill. The contractor installed clean fill, but did not adequately drain the groundwater from the excavated area. As a result, the backfill material absorbed the water and therefore could not be adequately compacted and needed to be removed once again. This led to a non-performance meeting with the contractor in December. The meeting was held due to the lack of progress on the project, lack of continuous efforts once mobilized, inadequate care and control of the site from environmental conditions and overall poor quality of work performed to date. The deficiencies included saturated and frozen ground, insufficient base material under the floor slab, rutting and damage to the Municipality’s park property and non-submittal of the requested project schedule.

Standard Paving Ltd. was allowed to continue with the job, and has been working slowly since December. They had expected to be done by June 7. Councillor Janice Maynard asked staff for a report on the project. It came before committee of the whole on Thursday. Maynard is not confident that the contractor will meet its new completion date of July 3. “This completion date has been disregarded a number of times. Just from looking at the site, the interior doesn’t appear to be done, sidewalk pouring, holding tank installation, water connection, site remediation. I’m looking for some assurance that July 3 date will be held,” said Maynard. “Where do we go with this from here?”

The tender documents stated that construction of the new facility was to be completed by October 1, 2018. However, the tender documents did not state liquidated damages would be applied if the completion date was not met.

Peter Moyer, Director of Development Services, acknowledged the delays. “I definitely agree this has been challenging, for what should have been a very small project.” Moyer explained that Project Manager Garrett Osborne is checking in on the site daily, and there has been progress made in the past weeks. “There is no way that we can guarantee [the contractor] will be done on July 3. I guess what we can say is we will guarantee that we will continue to work diligently to apply pressure to get it done as soon as possible.”

Moyer told council that an issue lies with its procurement process. “Part of the problem is it’s a small project. The other part of the problem is we have a procurement policy, and a purchasing policy that is fairly robust, and it is designed to protect us. Those types of documents are difficult for a small contractor. They don’t understand the paperwork and they don’t understand the risk involved,” said Moyer. The County decided to make the tender more flexible, in hopes to attract more contractors to step forward with bids. They received three bids and chose the lowest one.

Brad Nieman wanted to know what the course of action would be if the project was not completed by July 3. “To be honest, there is not a lot we can do. There is no penalty that we can impose,” said Moyer. “If we terminated, it is not going to make the project get done any faster. You might have short-term relief from the pain, but in the long term we will probably end up in a two-year legal battle and spend $100,000 in legal fees. You pick your battles, and if you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, which we can here, you do everything to get to that light. When you start litigation, that light disappears.”

Mayor Steve Ferguson was quick to get his point across. “We’ve got to do better than best we can and pushing as hard as we can. I, too,find it embarrassing that this eyesore continues to exist.”

Moyer ended the discussion by telling council they are nearing the finish line. “Let’s grind through it the best we can. We will continue to apply pressure. We are nearing the end. We will get through it, just not as quickly and pretty as we had hoped.”