In anticipation of further budget increases, an additional million dollars was included in the 2014 capital budget for the library and cultural centre, bringing the total project budget to $9.5 million.
That’s $2 million more than council approved at the outset of the renovation and expansion project three years ago. The additional funds will come from the municipality’s unrestricted reserves. Although the additional funds are within the approved capital budget, administration will have to receive further approval from council to spend beyond the approved $8.5 million budget.
Alice Lettner, the municipality’s director of finance, said once the budget gets to $8.4 million—it is currently $200,000 away—she will bring forward a request for the additional funds to be released, so the municipality can continue paying the project’s bills.
“The biggest problem with the library right now is that we have to continue to pay the bills,” she said, noting that that’s true regardless of whether the municipality thinks it should have to pay them or not. “We have to pay until the building is completed and the mediation program comes into place.”
This latest million dollar increase comes after two years of construction nightmares and includes funds to address three new issues that Peter Waterworth, chief administrative officer, reported to council during the April 1 regular meeting.
“There are three very substantial issues,” said Waterworth, “the floors, the stairs at the front of the building and the operable windows at the back of the library.”
Beginning with the floors, Waterworth explained that he recently found out all of the floors in the building are uneven and have to be levelled.
“There is a tolerance level of plus-or-minus five millimetres, and it was nowhere near that within a 10-metre square,” said Waterworth of the area the contractors tested after noticing the discrepancy while installing a panel of moveable glass walls. “So we required the whole of the building, all of the floors, to be tested on that 10-metre grid basis, and not one of the floors met specification.”
Waterworth said he had been asking the contractors about the floors for more than a year and, all that time, he was receiving assurances that they were fine. He said it is “beyond comprehension” that this problem exists today.
The next issue he addressed was the design for the windows at the back of the library. According to Waterworth, the contractors “signed off on shop drawings” for the design, but “as of yet they have not actually discovered a design for those windows that will work.”
As for the stairs, the design was drawn to have them centred on “risers”—metal supports with one bar running the length of the stairs and numerous shorter bars running perpendicular to that bar, where the each individual stair would sit—but the way the risers were placed, the stairs cannot sit squarely on top. Instead they would be set to one side, said Waterworth.
“To remedy it to get [the stairs to sit squarely] would require a substantial amount of work, in terms of removal of concrete” and it could also require the removal of the large glass windows surrounding the stairwell.
Waterworth reported again at the committee-of-the-whole meeting, April 8, after having met with the contractors the previous week. He said there has been progress on all three issues, but nothing is yet solved. And he also noted that it will take between seven and 10 weeks to level the floors.
Between these latest issues and the many others that have plagued the building over the past two years of construction, the project is already 15 months overdue and it is looking like it won’t be completed anytime soon.
Last month, Waterworth met with the user groups who are scheduled to move into the building—the library, Jasper Artists Guild, Habitat for the Arts and L’Association canadienne-française de l’Alberta—to advise them that he has no confidence the library will be completed by May, as was previously reported.
Instead, he hesitantly guessed, that the building will be done by the late summer or early fall.
Since construction began in November 2011, there have been numerous delays caused by unforeseen circumstances—like substantial asbestos removal from the existing library building—and by errors made by the builder and architect.
The issues caused by the two contractors have resulted in construction delays to determine who is liable for the errors—including the mechanical issues that plagued the building in the early part of 2013 and the need to replace the roof last summer.
Stantec has taken responsibility for the mechanical issues and, in July 2013, it was determined that both Delnor and Stantec are responsible for the inadequate materials and construction of the roof.
Because of the extensive list of problems with the building’s construction and design and the delays associated with those issues, the legal disputes over liability will continue following the completion of the building.
Lettner said the hope is that through a mediation process, the municipality will be reimbursed for most, if not all, of the overruns on the project.
But, having said that, she also said “I’m not holding my breath for total coverage.”
Following Waterworth’s April 8 presentation to committee-of-the-whole, council was exasperated, and in response, Coun. Gilbert Wall said, “It’s like a bad Monty Python sketch—it’s really discouraging.”
Nicole Veerman
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