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Written by MARK NIELSENCitizen staff
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Tuesday, 18 November 2008 |
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City council held off Monday on selecting a construction manager for the new Prince George RCMP detachment over concerns about the scoring used to determine the best bidder.
At issue is whether Kelowna-based Dominion Fairmile Construction should be given the work or it should go to locally-based IDL Projects. Dominion Fairmile earned the highest overall score and was first in seven of the 10 categories considered, but IDL came out ahead on both quality control-cost control and in project fees and expenses.
Mayor Colin Kinsley contended greater weight should have been given to those two categories and while Dominion Fairmile has more experience building police detachments he noted the company has no experience building in northern B.C. winters.
The construction manager's work will consist of two phases, beginning with pre-construction where advice is provided on detailed design development, contract document preparation and bid stages of the project.
After the subtrade contracts have been tendered and closed, a combined stipulated price contract and the team assembled to build the facility will be presented to city council for approval before construction can start.
The second phase -- construction and post-construction services -- will also be overseen by the construction manager.
The construction manager works with the architect to determine how the project should be built
Dominion Fairmile is proposing to do the first phase of the work for $90,000 compared to $68,320 for IDL but Kinsley noted Dominion Fairmile is asking for a commission of three per cent on the cost of the project. At $30 million, that would amount to $1 million.
City suppler services manager Scott Bone said the item could be taken to third-party procurement experts to review the process and council unanimously endorsed his idea.
The review should take about a month so the item will be brought back to the new council whose first meeting is on Dec. 1 but should not impose a serious delay on the project's overall timeline, council was told.
The pre-construction phase should take about five months and construction, which is expected to start in the spring, should take about two years. To be built at the corner of Fourth and Victoria, the main building for new detachment will be 64,714 square feet, well up from the roughly 33,000 square feet the current building covers at the corner of Ninth and Brunswick.
About three-quarters of the building will be office space but the building will also require a high level of security and the cells must be built to very tight specifications, council was told. The plan also calls for a building that meets the gold standard for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).
LEED benefits include a lower life-cycle cost and a more pleasant place for employees to work, council was told.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 19 November 2008 )
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Last I checked, 3% of $30 million was $9 million. 1% of 30 million makes 3 million.
Was this a typo or did Kinsley actually get that wrong?