ELORA – Centre Wellington has hired Stirling Rothesay Consulting Incorporated to work on a new Space Needs Assessment and Concept Design for the township’s future operations centre.
“As council is aware the recently passed corporate strategic plan outlined opening a new operations facility as one of its initiatives for the 2019 to 2022 period,” said Dan Wilson, township treasurer and managing director of corporate services. “To get this underway a space needs assessment and concept design is required so that we can move to detail design after that and then onward to construction.
“The scope of work is looking at a background review space needs assessment business case and cost estimate for the overall plan concept design and project cost estimate for the township operations centre.”
The township sent out a request for proposal and received three responses from:
– KNYMH Inc.;
– Reinders and Reider Ltd.; and
– Stirling Rothesay Consulting Incorporated.
The applications were then reviewed by the following criteria regarding the proponent team overview and qualifications:
– project manager and deputy project manager qualifications;
– project team technical expertise;
– project understanding, approach and methodology;
– work plan and schedule; and
– fees.
The selection committee recommended hiring the highest scored applicant, Stirling Rothesay Consulting Incorporated.
The upset limit for the project would be $76,755 plus tax.
In total the project would cost $88,375. Of that $61,269 would come from the operations facility remaining funds. The $27,106 over budget will come from development charges ($18,161), general capital reserve ($5,367), water capital reserve ($1,789) and wastewater capital reserve ($1,789).
“I think most of the councillors had an opportunity to have a road tour of some of our public works and our essential services facilities and for one I’m really happy to see potentially moving ahead,” Linton said.
“They’re at their end of life and it’s really, really important that we look after our facilities and give our staff a place that is a good place to work.”
He added that while the facilities are clean they are in a state of disrepair and should have been replaced or repaired a while ago.
Councillor Bob Foster asked why the township had to spend $80,000 on consultants when there are engineers on staff who could do the work.
Colin Baker, managing director of infrastructure services for the township, explained that the project would take about 700 hours of work.
“This is something that these firms do every day,” he explained. “So we just don’t have that capacity with our current staff to get that done in a timely fashion.”
Baker said the timeline for the project is aggressive with staff coming back to council on Nov. 25 with a concept design and revised cost estimate.
“We want those numbers to inform the 2020 capital budget process,” he said.
At that point council will look at the detailed design.
If approved the detail design would take place in 2020 and construction would take place in 2021.
“Kind of a key issue in this … was the helipad that’s beside the Fergus shop currently will no longer be required in the spring of 2020,” Baker said. “So that opens up some additional property there beside the existing Fergus shop on Glengarry Crescent.”
There are currently five facilities that the township is working out of but with the assessment completion that could all change. The evaluation would be part of the process, Baker explained.
Council awarded the request for proposal to Stirling Rothesay Consulting Incorporated. A report is expected for Nov. 25.
