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Taber arena renovations continuing
Posted on August 1, 2018 by Taber TimesPoll
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By Cole Parkinson
Taber Times
cparkinson@tabertimes.com
Town of Taber council has made a decision on their previous submitted tender for phase two renovations at the Taber Arena which includes electrical work and relocating the sanitary line.
With the pre-bid meeting taking place on June 28 with representation from 14 different companies, council was presented with three recommended options.
During council’s special meeting on July 18, they were presented with tenders from Nitro Construction (Lethbridge), VHL Construction (Taber) and Amron Construction (Redcliff) for tender amounts of $730,000, $754,900 and $794,198 respectively.
All prices also include a prime cost allowance of $85,000 but not GST with the expense approved in the 2018 Capital Budget for $680,000.
Staff says there were a few different aspects that caused the price to jump up and originally, the plan called for a phase three but staff folded it into phase two.
“A couple of things have changed along the way which drove the price up a little bit. One of them was, the phase three was electrical panel upgrades. We added the electrical panel upgrades at the auditorium as well, so when we started looking at that, it was in our best interest to combine the auditorium panels with arena panels as one project, with one company so there was a little bit of an increase there,” said Aline Holmen, director of recreation. “When they went looking for electrical panels, they found some that weren’t in the way and they didn’t even know existed. That drove it up a little bit.”
Another feature they would have to upgrade was a ramp in the rink due to it causing problems with the sanitary line.
“The other part of it is the extension of the ramp in the back, it was noted the sanitary line was too low. So we had to reroute and relocate that one,” continued Holmen.
Another $80,000 will be needed on top of the tender price for engineering fees for MPE with that money being separate from the tender process.
With the increased costs for the project, staff says they do have enough money saved up to close the gap.
After savings on other projects such as the LED sign and auditorium upgrades, which in total were estimated to be around $246,000, staff was confident in approving the project.
“We have those funds in reserves, so it’s not new money necessarily. We also have savings on other projects, John (Orwa, director of finance) and I discussed this,” added Holmen.
She also pointed out the money in reserves was already committed by council but now would just be reallocated for the arena upgrades.
With the lowest bid from Nitro Construction, staff recommended awarding them the tender.
When work does commence for the project, there will be restricted access to some areas in the facility and they hope work will finish prior to the end of September, right before the rink sees most of its action.
Council questioned whether or not the town had worked with Nitro Construction before and if they were a reliable company to award the tender to.
While staff didn’t know for sure if they had previously employed Nitro to do work for them in the past, they did some reference checks on the business and they were recommended by MPE.
A motion was made to approve the Nitro Construction bid and to have $80,000 available for engineering from reserves and was passed unanimously by council.
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