Water and sewer replacement will be taking place in the Pioneer House and Lodge area in Lloydminster.
Work will be taking place between 51 St. from 57 Ave. to 58 Ave. and 58 Ave. from 50 St. to 51 St.
Administration asked council to approve an additional $220,000 from reserves for this project.
“We budgeted the $2.5 million and then all of the bids that came back were over that, so we wanted to allocate this $220,000 to compensate for that,” said Coun. Justin Vance.
The reason this project is getting additional funding is in part for the contingency.
“Of the $220,000, similar to the Russ Robertson Arena, there is a significant portion of that going to cover our contingency to cover unknown circumstances or things that we find in the field,” said James Rogers, senior manager, capital infrastructure.
“There is also a portion to cover overages in unit prices that we have to cover the base contract value.”
Rogers says it can be difficult to asses the condition of these pipes.
“Where water pipe, I can’t open it up and go and see what’s inside it, what is the condition of it, what is the wall thickness, there is technology out there but it’s very cost prohibitive,” he said.
He went on to explain factors they use to determine when particular pieces of infrastructure need repair.
“With respect to water pipe, we go off of water-main-break history, we go off of the original material, what is it made of, asbestos cement, is it made of steel, is it made of PVC, and then, what was the installation year,” said Rogers.
He says with the sanitary and storm systems they can get into with CCTV cameras but they can still only do a visual inspection.
Coun. Jim Taylor asked how this has affected residents in the past in the areas of work.
“These are very difficult programs; we have to dig down to the water mains, we have to dig down to the sanitary sewer, we have to replace the services from the mains in the road to the property line adjacent to the sidewalk, said Rogers.
“They are intrusive programs. We have already started notifying residents as soon as Jan. 1 hits we put out our impending construction notices. We provide as much information as we can at the time and continually reach out to all residents.”
He said they’ve been working to minimize the impacts to residents in the area.
“In this case, we’ve been working with Pioneer House and Pioneer Lodge quite collaboratively to minimize the impact to their residents and visitors to their site,” said Rogers.
Despite water being shut off, Rogers says people are still provided clean water out of their taps.
“The water in recent years, we have changed that to where we are providing potable water to all residents affected so you can turn on your tap you drink it right out of the tap,” he said.
The project is expected to start in the Spring of this year and finish by Sept. 26. Council approved the motion to commit additional funding to the project. They also awarded the contract to Rusway Construction Ltd. in the amount of $2,573,355.06 and a 5 per cent contingency of $128,667.75.
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