WEYBURN – Businesses and residents near Railway Avenue from Fifth to Seventh Streets will see a major disruption to the traffic and to their water supply, as the City of Weyburn will undertake a watermain replacement project this year.
The tender for the project was approved by city council on Monday night, with A&B Concrete of Weyburn getting the nod with a bid about a half million dollars less than the competing bid.
The A&B bid was $162,336, while Accurate HD Ltd. bid $633,338 for the project to replace about 205 metres of 200mm watermain and associated infrastructure, including two valve replacement, three watermain connections and a hydrant lead.
In addition, the contractor is to provide and maintain an overland water supply to one residence and four commercial properties on Railway Avenue, and they are to contain and dispose all asbestos cement materials, and supply, grade and compact the sub base and base for paving the street once the project is done.
After the work is done, the City will bring in another contractor to pave over the affected stretch of Railway Avenue.
Asked why there was such a large discrepancy between the two bids, city engineer Jennifer Wilkinson said it’s difficult to factor everything a company needs to include in a bid.
She noted that for the out-of-town contractor, they would be including travel and accommodations for their crew during the project, plus there may be differences in material cost from their suppliers.
As A&B is based in Weyburn, their personnel are already here and don’t need to travel or be put up in a hotel for the duration of the project, she added.
• In other council business, council approved a tender for a crack sealer machine at the bid price of $86,025, from Cubex Equipment.
A total of 11 bids were received, with one disqualified bid, and the machine chosen was one best suited for the city’s requirements, said Wilkinson.
Asked about the price differences, with some machines costing over $136,000, Wilkinson noted some of the machines put forward were more suited to a large city or for highway work. The City was able to try a demo of the machine they chose, and it is much better suited for the size of Weyburn and the types of cracks it will be used for.
She noted that by having this machine, they will no longer have to hire a contractor to come in on their own schedule, but the city crews can go out and seal up cracks as needed, and this will save the city in time and money. The city is hoping this machine will last them 10 or 15 years, she added.
• The City approved a bid by KGS Group to conduct a Phase 2 environmental site assessment on the public works yard, at a cost of $48,248.
The bid was chosen out of 18 proposals submitted by various environmental consulting firms. All of the proposals had to be evaluated with a weighted score with criteria including qualifications, performance, knowledge of regulatory requirements, methodology, borehole rationale and relevant technical experience.
The second assessment was required by the Ministry of Environment, after the discovery of historical hydrocarbon impacted soil on the site of the new fleet storage building.
After the Phase 2 assessment is done, the City will liaise with Environment to determine the requirements for removing the contaminated soil and put in a corrective action plan for the site.
