By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON April 21, 2011 – It was a pretty quiet Council committee evening. Interesting stuff which will get covered off in material we file later in the day. Started at 6:30 and everyone was a little grumpy come 10 pm when it looked like we were all going to get to go home.
Tom Eichenbaum was on hand to give an update on the Pier. I wondered why Tom, the senior engineer was giving the update and why this was being left to the very end of the meeting. There was so much good stuff happening with the Pier that I wasn’t ready for the Kaboom!
that made the council committee move into an In Camera session and I get ushered out of the room.
The road to nowhere just hit a speed bump.
When Eichenbaum went to the Council table he had a very thick binder in his hands –well he’s an engineer and these guys always have thick binders of stuff in their hands. After explaining that Procurement Specialist Consulting had been put in place and the city was ready to issue a contract to Cassels Brock, a Toronto based firm with a fine reputation. They even named the two people from the firm that would be taking on the task. This was good news. Progress.
The engineering department interviewed six firms to provide project management services and settled on SMA/Mettko, the firm that is doing project management for the new fire station at Appleby Line and Upper Middle Road. This meant the city was going to be working with people they already knew. This was good news. Progress.
Morrison Hersfield was already in place as the Design Consultants. They advised early in April that the permit process was coming along just fine. When a new contractor is put in place everything has to go back almost to square one. New drawings have to be prepared, no one was prepared to rely on drawings from the original design team – they were the guys that provided a design that basically fell apart during a concrete pour.
Poor weather has delayed a structural inspection and the underwater inspection is scheduled to get done at the end of the month. The site survey has been completed. Appreciate that when the original contractor walked off the job the gates were locked and that was it – nothing was done other than to secure the site.
The drawings for the structural steel had commenced. This was good news. Progress.
Everything was coming along just fine and the Mayor was less apologetic about the Pier.
Then Eichenbaum casually mentioned that a document had been delivered to the Engineering with a proposal from the bonding company about a consortium that had been put together to complete the Pier – and that the consortium included the original contractor who had walked away from the job late last year. This was not good news. This was not progress.
Well it was one of those ‘slap me silly’ moments. Here we are doing just fine – going our own way after the original contractor walked off the job and the insurance company said they were not going to honour the performance bond the original contractor had put in place.
The city had ended its relationship with the original project management company and had all but completed the process of putting a new team in place to get the Pier built – and now this?
Eichenbaum was reporting that his staff had only been able to give the document a cursory look and would get into the details and do a full scale review and report back when they have been able to arrive at an opinion. Well, he has to do that. But I’ll bet my allowance that he also put in a call to the legal people to give them a heads up.
Heck we are in the process of suing Zurich Insurance for not paying the performance bond and we are suing the original contractor for walking off the job and we are suing the original contract managers for not doing their job. It took this council close to four months to get all the crap out of the way and get the city to the point where there was movement on the project. Now what?
Tom Eichenbaum wasn’t smiling when he left the Council Chamber and there were voices raised loud enough while Council was In Camera, that they could be heard in the foyer outside the chamber.
It was tough to read the faces of the seven council members when they moved back into open session. The Mayor did say to the Director of Communications that there wouldn’t be any big splashy event to celebrate the opening of the Pier.
This might be a bit of a set back and it may move the Grand Opening date back a bit – but this latest problem is not the fault of anyone on this council or within the Engineering department. They have all pulled together to clean up a real mess.
Imagine that you are dressed in your finest on Easter Sunday and you step outside the house and a robin flies overhead and does what most birds do then they fly – splat on your freshly cleaned suit. S… happens and you just have to clean it up and move on. But Burlington didn’t need this set back.
Let’s hope that the Mayor gets out in front of this one and doesn’t hide behind the advice of the lawyers. Just tell the public as much as you can about what are up against ands ask for their patience and support.
[retweet]
