Guelph-Eramosa has come in under budget on two road repair tenders this year.
Director of public works Harry Niemi chose to lump the construction of Mill Road and Crowsfoot Road into one tender with the hopes that there would be cost savings.
The accepted tender for both projects was from Cox Construction for an amount of $514,399 including HST. The township had budgeted a combined total of $1.28 million in the 2016 budget.
“That included a large contingency allowance for the Mill Road project,” Niemi said.
“At the time of the capital budget preparations we were uncertain as to whether we would need to do some significant full depth reconstruction on Mill Road.
“That’s not required so there’s some savings there.”
Based on the tender results and engineering costs, the total cost of the two projects will be approximately $560,000.
Niemi also explained the required debenture would be about half of the $1.22 million budgeted amount. The $600,000 also includes the Mill Road bridge, he said.
“You save a half a million dollars on the road we’re looking at,” Mayor Chris White said. “That’s half a million dollars you can put into another road.”
Niemi said the biggest reason the bid is lower than expected is the asphalt quantities and unit costs.
“We were a little generous in terms of pavement risks … so the pavement quantities in the budget were higher than the actual tender quantities and again the final, the big thing here, is the actual cost of asphalt that we received in the tenders was about 40 per cent savings in the actual unit cost of asphalt,” Niemi said.
Councillor Corey Woods said the residents on Mill Road are asking for part of the shoulder to be paved to accommodate farm equipment.
“So talking with Harry we may end up paving a little bit of the shoulder,” Woods said.
“We won’t get as much of a savings but we’re still going to get good savings so it will be in Harry’s hands what he thinks the width of the asphalt should be. Pretty much it was everybody we talked to said the shoulders need to be paved for the heavy equipment.”
The township received five bids for the tender. The other four, including HST, included:
– Steed and Evans at $583,000;
– Capital Paving Inc., $584,066;
– Brantco Construction, $585,457; and
– Murray Group Limited, $624,063.
The township also sent out the tender for the Hillside Drive, Gazer Crescent and Eramosa Crescent resurfacing project.
Council accepted the tender from Capital Paving for $154,058 including HST. The amount was also under the budgeted $277,000 for all three projects.
The township received six bids for the tender. The other five, including HST, included:
– Cox Construction, $155,715;
– A. Wesley Paving Ltd., $162,080;
– Brantco Construction, $171,370;
– Steed and Evans, $178,296; and
– The Murray Group, $215,500.
