Flooding hits airport road hard

ADVANCE FILE PHOTO

By Cole Parkinson
Vauxhall Advance
cparkinson@tabertimes.com

In the aftermath of overland flooding in the Municipal District of Taber, some areas have been hit harder with repairs than others.

One of the areas that have made it to the top of the list is Township Road 10-2, which is just west of the M.D. of Taber airport.

With the flooding that happened throughout the early parts of spring, it has left the road in bad condition and the M.D. looked at ways to address the concerns during their regular meeting on May 22.

“There are a few issues we have to deal with that one, it’s not your stereotypical road crossing. In fact, it’s kind of a nasty one,” said Jack Dunsmore, director of planning and infrastructure.

With the damage from the flooding to the roads, a makeshift road was constructed to allow vehicle to by pass the damage.

The damages across the region has forced the M.D. to make arrangements to tender out the work and the temporary road will be crucial for workers to get in and out of the area.

“A few of the complicating factors is the watering potential for springs in the area as well as it is one way in, one way out access point. How we had it in the tendered documents was, it was required to be access for vehicles throughout the duration of construction which makes the build much more difficult for the contractors coming through,” said Craig Pittman, public works superintendent. “We have, for traffic, we used some rig matting and built a short little detour around the washout area and the local land owner has a bit of access through a field until the irrigation waters turn on.”

With the amount of work piling up after the floods, the M.D. had hoped to get a few quotes after the tender was sent out but they soon realized many other companies were also behind after the delayed start to spring.

The tender was sent to four different potential businesses but they only received one quote from an interested party.

“What we did is, we did an invitational tender through four different contractors which closed on May 16. No bids were received at the time of closing. We got on the phone to phone the contractors, three of the four mentioned that they had other work lined up and weren’t able to deliver this on time with our June 15 completion date. With that, there was one that had intents of bidding on the project and submitted a quote.”

Miller Excavating, RCB Excavating, Ground Tech Enterprises and Porter Tanner Associates were all apart of the tender process.

Miller Excavating did not submit a bid and cited concerns of groundwater and ensures if they would meet the timelines as reasons, RCB Excavating had recently been awarded another contract and were unable to do both at once and Porter Tanner Associates cited too busy to meet timelines as their reasons for not submitting a bid.

Ground Tech Enterprises also did not submit a bid during the tender process due to confusion over tender opening but did have a quote available to M.D. staff.

Their quote came in at $274,450 which was slightly higher than what they expected.

“Moving forward with this, the initial estimate was right around $200,000 for the completion of this. Where we are going to end is approximately $290,000 including engineering for this project so it’s a bit higher than we anticipated but looking at the circumstance of the project, we feel this price is fair,” continued Pittman.

Council voted unanimously in favour to award Ground Tech Enterprises the work and to enter into a service agreement referencing the tender documents for work.

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