Geotechnical services in Lloydminster will be done by SolidEarth Geotechnical Inc. for the next three years following a council motion.
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The current standing offer agreement ended in 2025 and council put out a new request for proposal (RFP).
SolidEarth has been providing services in the city for a number of years.
“SolidEarth Geotechnical services has provided our standing offer agreement materials testing service since 2018,” said James Rogers, senior manager, capital infrastructure, noting projects SolidEarth has been a part of vary greatly.
“The projects they’ve provided services on during that tenure include numerous paving projects along 44 St. They’ve provided numerous support for our water and sewer replacement programs, our ditch and drainage channel projects. (They were also) instrumental in some of our landfill projects,” said Rogers.
The work they do is important to understanding what’s in the ground.
“We start off doing a geotechnical investigation, that’s this consultant, going out, drilling into the roadway, drilling down through the gravels through the clay, trying to find out what’s down there. They (then) provide us design parameters,” said Rogers.
The City of Lloydminster says the approach of using a standing offer with a single company has proved to be beneficial. They say it has improved consistency regardless of the project manager or capital project’s intent.
The standing offer approach is used as the city doesn’t know how many times they’ll need to use the contractor as it may vary based on the quantity and location of services.
The final cost is also dependant on a number of factors, making costing for an RFP difficult.
“What we did in preparing this RFP is went back through our previous three-year standing offer agreement and on average what do we do per year,” said Rogers.
He said they considered how many hours they would need their geotechnical services.
Council awarded the three-year geotechnical materials testing standing agreement to SolidEarth Geotechnical.
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