Bids to build Sylvan’s new fire hall were all too high so it’s back to the drawing board to find ways to reduce the cost.
Councillors were faced with either rejecting all eight bids received or increasing the budget by over $250,000, during their meeting Monday night.
They unanimously chose to accept the fire hall task force’s recommendation to reject all bids and not award a construction contract.
The lowest ‘compliant’ bid was from Temple Contracting Inc. of Sherwood Park at $5,071,581 excluding GST. That exceeded the pre-bid construction estimate of $4,848,800. The highest bid was $6.864 million.
Now staff is tasked with revising the scope of work so the project can be re-bid later this year.
In his report to council, project manager David Yee wrote cost savings could be possible due to tendering of another large capital project, the multiplex redevelopment, at the same time. “‘Having multiple projects being tendered at or near the same time will have more competition among prospective bidders including interest from larger construction companies.”‘
Other cost savings could be found by removing the paving component to a contract that is administered each year by the town; doing the landscaping component in house through the parks department or adding it to contract work that is often done each year.
The disadvantage of council’s decision is that is delays completion of the project to summer or fall of 2016.
If they’d increased the budget the project could have been completed next year.