The pre-qualified contractors for the Burlington, Ontario Brant Street Pier project are Belor Construction Ltd., BoT Construction Limited, Concreate USL (GP) Inc., Graham Group Ltd., PCL Constructors Canada Inc., Rankin Construction (St. Catharines) and Toronto Zenith Contracting Ltd. The original contract was awarded to Harm Schilthuis and Sons Ltd. (HSS) but work stopped in 2009.
There are seven pre-qualified contractors interested in the City of Burlington’s tender for completion of its problem-plagued Brant Street Pier project.
The seven pre-qualified contractors are Belor Construction Ltd., BoT Construction Limited, Concreate USL (GP) Inc., Graham Group Ltd., PCL Constructors Canada Inc., Rankin Construction (St. Catharines) and Toronto Zenith Contracting Ltd. The tender was issued July 20 and the bids will be opened publicly on Aug. 10.
Tender selection is expected in October after a review of the submissions.
Construction on the troubled pier project started in fall 2006, but the site has seen no construction activity since 2009 after an assortment of setbacks, ranging from a crane collapse in 2008 to steel in the structure failing quality tests in 2009.
The original tender to build the 132-metre pier was awarded to Harm Schilthuis and Sons Ltd. (HSS).
The city hopes to complete construction of the pier by summer 2013 and has budgeted just over $15 million to do so.
City staff estimated that removing the pier would cost $15.5 million, including covering costs so far, demolition and repaying other government funding.
METTKO, the pier’s project manager, recently outlined for the city the differences between the March 2005 pre-qualification process and the one used this past June. Among the differences was a weighting of 20 per cent for safety records in 2011 compared to eight per cent in 2005.
The budget for the first phase of the pier, with the original contractor, was $9.27 million.
Burlington recently approved an additional $5.8 million to cover renewed construction.
Burlington also continues to move forward with its $10 million lawsuit against AECOM, the project’s original design engineer and a second lawsuit for $7.5 million against HSS and its respective insurers.
In a report to her constituents, Marianne Meed Ward, the Burlington councillor for the ward where the pier is located, wrote she favoured negotiating with HSS and the bonding company instead of retendering the project which only adds “time and money, and pinning our hopes — and dollars — on recovering money through legal action.”
“Undoubtedly, this option carried risk, as did all the options we considered,” she added.
Meed Ward explained to her constituents that the risks in retendering need to be considered, from bids coming in too high to the pier’s design possibly being faulty.
“This was at the heart of the dispute between the engineer and contractor and has never been fully resolved,” she added in her report.
Meed Ward also explained that before being elected as Burlington councillor in 2010 she researched the pier and discovered the project’s contract administrator — tasked with settling disputes — was also the design engineer.
“That handicapped impartial resolution of the design questions that were raised. An industry best practice is to separate the two,” she explained. “The city has now hired a project manager that’s independent of the design company.”
Meed Ward’s research also indicated that there was no mandatory mediation clause in the original contract, so the contractor and engineer were “never forced to sort this out.”
She also learned, shortly after joining council, that there was no regular reporting on the pier, Burlington council only received reports as issues arose but often key deadlines had been missed “or positions became entrenched and intractable.” Meed Ward has asked for reports every three weeks at each Burlington community services committee and council and staff agreed.
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