New committee to tackle construction issues

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This article was published 21/03/2023 (399 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Construction Association of Rural Manitoba and City of Brandon will strike a new committee to ensure they’re on the same page when it comes to new building construction following the confusion that surrounded Park Community Centre.

The community centre request for proposal — which resulted in council rejecting all three bids that were submitted for the demolition of the existing building and construction of a new one — wasn’t the only subject discussed at a recent meeting between the association and city.

But the subject did come up as an example of a bigger problem.

“It only came up in the sense that it was one of many [tenders] that we think the city could have done a better job handling it,” Shawn Wood, executive director of CARM, said in an interview on Tuesday. “Whether that’s before it goes out for tender, just in some further consults, or things that could have been put into the tendering documents to make it more understandable and give the city more options.”

Controversy surrounding Park Community Centre, located on the 1400 block of Louise Avenue, erupted in early February after council deferred a decision on whether to follow a recommendation of administration to reject all three bids submitted for the demolition/rebuild request for proposal due to lack of funds in the parks reserve. Area residents rushed to the centre’s defence, believing such a decision effectively resigned their community hall to demolition.

At its regular council meeting on March 6, council did reject all three bids but promised to protect the building until a new request for proposals could be issued that would allow for a design that better suited the community’s needs — and would possibly be smaller and cheaper.

Just before council reached that decision, however, city manager Ron Bowles warned councillors that if they rejected all the bids, the city might face a credibility issue when tenders are issued in the future. The companies that entered bids had spent time and money only to be rejected.

Wood said Wednesday’s meeting at city hall was attended by Mayor Jeff Fawcett, city administration (including Bowles) and representatives from the association.

It also included representatives from Ben Wiebe Construction and Excel-7 Ltd. who had concerns about the city’s tendering process, Wood said.

They’re also two of the companies that had their bids on the Park centre project rejected. Wood said he previously met with the third bidder, Jacobson Commercial.

When contacted by the Sun on Tuesday, Ben Wiebe Construction and Jacobson Commercial representatives deferred comment to the construction association. Representatives for Excel-7 couldn’t immediately be reached.

Wood said it was CARM that called for the meeting with the city. He confirmed that members were frustrated with the tendering process, and contractors might stop bidding on requests for proposals (each submission having an estimated cost of $30,000) if the project isn’t actually awarded.

The wording of contracts were also a concern, Wood added. It was suggested that RFPs include wording that would allow the city to work with the lowest bidders to tweak projects so they are within budget instead of turfing bids simply because they’re overbudget. That’s provided the changes are minor, Wood explained; major changes would create a different project, which would be unfair to other companies that didn’t have a chance to bid on it.

Wood said that as a result of the meeting, the association and city administration will now pursue the creation of a joint committee that would meet quarterly to discuss issues and brainstorm solutions.

“We all agreed that forming a committee to have those discussions would be the best way forward,” he said, adding the composition and members of that committee will be decided later.

He hopes the committee can hold its first meeting in June.

While he described himself as merely an observer at the meeting, Fawcett said there was healthy discussion.

“It was good,” the mayor said on Tuesday. “There’s a lot of people with a lot of professional experience. We do that with lots of different groups to try to make sure you’re getting good feedback.”

The city already meets with the heavy construction industry periodically to ensure industry standards meet everyone’s needs, he said. This committee will apply the process to the industry that constructs buildings.

“There’s a bunch of people that just want to do good work in the city on both sides,” Fawcett said.

» ihitchen@brandonsun.com