The municipality is free of liability for the replacement of the library and cultural centre roof.
“One hundred per cent of the redo on this roof, including the structural, the roofing, all aspects of it—including some wall work because the vapour barrier has to tie into the walls—has been allocated to Delnor and Stantec,” said Gord Hutton, the municipality’s on site manager. That allocation was the result of an extended legal battle between the municipality, Stantec—the project architect— and Delnor Construction Ltd.—the builder.
“The people who needed to be held accountable were held accountable,” added Peter Waterworth, chief administrative officer for the municipality. “But what I think is really important, it’s not only that we’re not responsible for the roof, it’s that it was identified and it was dealt with before the building was complete.”
The removal of the cedar shakes and shingles, as well as the roof’s air barrier, was the result of a third-party report that noted the roof was inadequate, as it didn’t have a vapour barrier, and the air barrier that existed wasn’t tied into the walls. That report was presented to council May 7.
Work on the roof began again last week. It is expected to be complete by the second week of August, said Hutton.
“Visually there’s not a whole lot changed,” said Hutton of the roof, “but the performance of the products used varies dramatically. Essentially it’s taking a very thin layer of paper and replacing it with a very thin layer of rubber and it makes all the difference in the world.”
Because the shingles were coming off anyway, the municipality has also decided to enhanced the roof by adding an extra layer of the rubber air and vapour barrier above the insulation. For that, the municipality will have to pay, as it’s an addition to the approved design, said Waterworth.
As of now, the budget implications of that are unknown.
The $8.5-million library renovation and expansion project is already a million dollars over budget after unforeseen issues with the renovation of the existing library—a heritage building subject to strict development rules.
Although the roof is being rectified and the liabilities have been determined, there are still legal dealings between the architect and builder, as the two parties determine who is responsible for the mechanical issues in the building.
The issue there is the original design of the building’s mechanical room.
“The heating system wasn’t powerful enough, I think that is the long and short of it,” said Waterworth.
“Yeah,” said Hutton, “the building’s not going to get enough heat at the critical periods, like the -40 C week that we have every winter. So they decided they need to boost the heating requirement a little bit.”
Those issues were caught by Heather Bretz, the third Stantec architect to take on the project. The first two left to move on to other projects.
When Bretz took on the job, she did a full review of the building—as is customary with any architect taking on an existing project.
“It’s her credentials that go on this building at the end of the day and if something’s wrong, it will come back to her, so she had to do a review and as soon as she identified problems, she had to bring them up,” said Hutton.
For those problems, the municipality is again free of liability, but it’s not yet clear how much the architect and builder will be liable for either. For instance, it’s not known if the two parties will be responsible for the cost of all the project delays.
Fortunately, while Stantec and Delnor work to resolve their legal issues, work will continue.
“The process is designed so that they can still be arguing about the precise cost of who pays what, but the work gets done,” said Waterworth, who is confident the building will be complete by the December 2013 deadline.
Nicole Veerman
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