Adam Bramburger
Beaver Staff
County councillors approved the low bid for its hot mix paving program last Wednesday despite the fact all three qualifying bids came in over the allocated budget.
Lennox and Addington will be paying R. W. Tomlinson Ltd. $4,891,163.83 including net HST to complete resurfacing of 9.5 km of County roads, spread across five projects. The winning bid came in about $277,000 over the 2018 budget allocation.
Councillor John Wise wondered why the budgeting was off the mark and asked whether increasing oil prices and materials were the reason for the higher dollar figure.
The County’s roads and bridges manager Chris Wagar indicated that was a factor. He also said the nature of one of the projects, which featured 3.8 km of asphalt rehabilitation with paved shoulders on County Rd. 2 from Shane Street east to the Frontenac County boundary changed once geotechnical surveys were considered. Wagar explained a 75-mm thick asphalt lift was being considered, but an increase to 110 mm was recommended, which increased material costs.
The remainder of the increase, however, had to do with market trends that have changed since council completed its budget process in March.
“The rest is fuel costs. It’s a little scary, it’s $1.31 a litre right now. Two months ago, it was $1.16-$1.17. Another thing is wages. I spoke to a contractor who is paying his labourers $23 or $24 an hour. He was paying $17 a year ago. No one wants to work in a dirty, hard-working environment when you can go stock shelves at $16 an hour. There were a lot of factors we didn’t anticipate.”
Wise said the realities of the current labour market make it difficult to do work for less.
“We’ve got the lowest unemployment rate in the province as we’ve had in a long time, so it has become a labour-advantage market for people looking for work,” he said.
Councillor Gord Schermerhorn added that stone prices are up 20 cents a pound also.
“That’s an attack from the Liberal government, another cost that has driven prices up,”he said.
In addition to the portion of County Rd. 2, the following projects are planned this year…
– A 3-km rural asphalt rehabilitation on County Rd. 1 from Hwy 401 to the County Rd. 18 overpass.
– A 1.4-km urban asphalt rehabilitation of County Rd. 41 (Centre Street) from Isabella Street to Jim Kimmett Boulevard in Napanee.
– A 700-m urban asphalt rehabilitation on County Rd. 4 in Tamworth between Bell Park Drive and the Tamworth bridge on Ottawa Street.
– A 600-m project with urban and rural asphalt rehabilitation on County Rd. 15 in Tamworth from County Rd. 4 to Jones Street.
Budget overages will be covered by Lennox and Addington’s roads and bridges reserve. In a report, Wagar indicated staff had discussed with consultant G.D. Jewell Engineering the possibility of reducing the scope of work to meet budget, but “concluded that it is more efficient to maintain the tendered scope of works.”
Coco Paving Inc. bid $5,137,819.45 and Cruickshank Construction Ltd. $5,898,214.52. In addition to price, a number of sustainability performance indicators were considered in deliberations.