City council has approved an additional $878,000 to carry out the long-anticipated reconstruction work on Laclie Street and Tecumseth Street, and it has selected Arnott Construction Limited to do the work – which is anticipated to begin later this spring.
The contractor’s $7.61 million bid came in $2.23 million cheaper than the only other bid the city received — from Trisan Construction.
Over the course of the construction season, extensive work will be carried out along Laclie Street between Neywash Street and Borland Street East, and along Tecumseth Street from Laclie Street to Centennial Drive.
“Anybody who lives down in that area is going to go through hell this summer, I think, but next year they're going to be living in paradise,” said Coun. Tim Lauer at Monday’s council meeting.
Originally budgeted as two projects, city staff decided to roll them into one.
“If we put those two projects out to tender separately, there'd be a chance that there'd be two separate contractors working on them side by side, (which) would lead to the potential for conflicts,” city project engineer Stan Martinello told councillors this week. “To avoid that, we put the two projects out as one tender.”
With the funding increase, the total budget for the work has risen from the $7.72 million originally approved in the 2023 budget to just under $8.6 million, when the price tag from Arnott is added to other costs.
For example, the project now has about $500,000 set aside in a contingency fund for the project, and an additional $370,000 has been allocated to hire R.J. Burnside & Associates — who completed detailed design for the work on both streets — to carry out contract administration and construction inspection.
Lauer questioned why the city should pay $370,000 for someone else to oversee and inspect the work, pointing out council set aside funds to hire a new project manager during the 2023 budget.
“That position is still looking for a candidate, and at this point, the project managers might be involved in contract administration, but typically not involved in contract inspection,” explained Ian Sugden, the city's general manager of development services and engineering.
Given extensive work being carried out in the city this year, such as the work along Centennial Drive, as well as extensive road and sidewalk resurfacing, the city’s inspectors are “fully engaged,” Sugden said.
“At what point does it make more sense to hire an inspector?” questioned Lauer.
“That's a difficult question to answer. I think it depends on the availability of inspection staff, and also the ability to rely on the same team that does the design to also oversee the contract administration.” Sugden said. “There is a sensitivity, generally, to just continually growing city staff, so this is one way to handle that issue, is to use contracted staff.”
Mayor Don McIsaac also had concerns about the request for additional funds, and wondered whether the price tag might climb higher before completion.
Martinello said he was confident the contingency fund could absorb any additional costs.
“We do have a contingency amount of about a half million (dollars) in the budget, and this project is relatively straightforward, compared to, for instance, the Centennial Drive project,” he said. “I'm fairly comfortable with the contingency amount.”
The work on Tecumseth Street will be funded through the Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund, as well as city reserves, whereas the work on Laclie Street will initially be financed through debt, with payments coming from road development charges and city reserves, noted staff.
Laclie Street has been deemed one of the region's worst roads in a CAA poll for several years.
