Three Surrey councillors asked city staff during Monday night’s council meeting to explain why costs have risen for two major community projects, Cloverdale Sport and Ice Complex and Newton Community Centre.
Council increased the expenditure authorization limit for its contract with Taylor Kurtz Architecture + Design Inc., in association with Rounthwaite, Dick and Hadley Architects Inc. by $1,502,311.65, to $2,629,066.65 from $1,126,755 for the Cloverdale Sport and Ice Complex and revised the authorized spending limit to $2,900,000.
Council also on Monday awarded Crown Contracting Limited $1,370,738.99 for the Cloverdale Sport and Ice Complex frontage works and set the spending limit at $1,507,800. This includes 177B Street roadwork between 62 Avenue and 64 Avenue and improvements to 64 Avenue, including pedestrian, cycling and vehicle access to the complex.
Coun. Linda Annis noted the bids ranged from $1.37 million to $2.1 million and asked city staff if the same materials and specifications were the same and “why there was such a variance.” She was told they all involved the same scope of work, means, methods and materials.
Coun. Jack Hundial asked for a reason for the increased cost of the Cloverdale and the Newton projects. He was told in the case of the Cloverdale project it was because the addition of a pool requires a more complicated design.
Coun. Brenda Locke said she “fully” understands the change in the pool’s size creates “challenges,” but asked what was reduced in the design. City Manager Vincent Lalonde replied that he wouldn’t portray it as the scope being reduced “because the budget and the scope has almost doubled, but what has changed is the priority on which elements to build under the first contract.”
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He said originally the city was looking at building a library, cultural centre, community centre and a swimming pool “of a much smaller scale.
“Council decided to build the full-size, 10 lane Olympic pool,” he said. “The scope is definitely much bigger.”
Council also increased the scope of work for the Newton Community Centre’s design and construction administration services as well as the authorized expenditure limit to $7,900,000 (including GST and contingency). A corporate report also recommended the expenditure authorization limit for the city’s contract with TKA+D Architecture + Design Inc., in association with MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects Ltd., be increased by $2,744,630.99 to $7,101,700.49 (including GST) from $4,357,069.50 for the Newton Community Centre project.
Locke asked staff to explain what’s driving the changes in costs from the 2018-19 plan to the current one. Lalonde replied that the price of steel has gone up “significantly.”
“I think that’s accountable for about $5 million of the additional cost,” he told council. “And the rest is just more general construction escalation. Of course each year construction costs more and more. It’s not uncommon with anything that we build; basically the longer we wait the more it costs to build.”