Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are of the Minister of Public Works in regard to a project and some questions I had raised in regard to this government awarding contracts to southern contractors and coming back with change orders that increase the cost of the initial project.
The project in question is the demolition of the Samuel Hearne Secondary School. I’d like to ask the Minister: What was the original cost of the contract, and to date, what is the total cost of the contract on top of what was originally awarded in the tender bid and the amount of change orders applied to the project?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Public Works, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The original cost, or the value of that contract, was $1.25 million. Since that contract was awarded, there have been three change orders, one for $741,000, one for $373,000, and one for $86,000, which brings the current contract value up to $2.451 million. The costs are related to the removal of asbestos and asbestos-contaminated material discovered during the demolition, which was not included in the original Hazmat assessment completed by a northern consulting firm prior to tender. In this case, anybody who bid on that contract would have been bidding based on that original study, and all firms, regardless whether they are southern or northern, would have had to have change orders.
There are a couple concerns here. Obviously, one from our local contractors not getting the awarded bid under some discrepancies with the Business Incentive Policy, but then also coming back, in their eyes or their perception, the southern contractors getting a change order without…(inaudible)…details. I’m glad that the Minister made reference to the Hazmat assessment, because right now we’re going to be going through some more demolitions with the Sir Alexander Mackenzie School, not to mention the Aurora College family housing units.
Will the Minister agree to fixing up the Hazmat assessment protocol so that when we get those bids coming through, the bids reflect what the Hazmat assessments do and we don’t have to keep on creating these change orders?
Mr. Speaker, the answer is yes. We have already taken those steps, lessons learned from the demolition of the Samuel Hearne. We have the original contractor who did the Hazmat assessment of SAMS was the same one who did Samuel Hearne. Since we got back the information on Samuel Hearne, we have actually gone and got a secondary Hazmat assessment done. But in the contracting of this next school and any future projects, we will provide a complete up-to-date Hazmat. We are also going to require contractors who wish to submit to go through the school or go through the area that we are going to do a demolition on and do their own assessment so they can put in a fair and accurate price. We will be looking more on a fixed price, based on an accurate Hazmat assessment. This should eliminate the need for significant change orders like we have seen in this particular contract.
Just as a note, although there have been some change orders, this project is still within the established budget. We haven’t gone over. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, in regard to this project, the timeline, I wanted to ask the Minister in the initial contract that was awarded, is this company on time to get the demolition work done or are they progressing beyond the timeline that was allocated that they had mentioned when they put in the tender bid? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, originally this project was slated for completion for March 31, 2013, but as the Member knows, because he lives in Inuvik and he has seen the school which is still standing, we didn’t finish on March 31, 2013. The new date is June 20, 2013. That is when we expect the school to be done, the site to be open.
The reason it was delayed is because ceiling tiles and fume hoods not identified in the original Hazmat were identified during Hazmat deconstruction. There is asbestos in the drywall that wasn’t identified in the original Hazmat assessment and mudded pipe joints which contain asbestos were also not in the pipes. We had to get those things out of the school before we could move forward with the actual teardown. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am obviously trying to stay on top of this project here, as well as getting concerns from some of the local contractors as well as local residents in terms of how the asbestos is being discarded, those kinds of things.
Just by seeing what is happening in the community, what is the percentage of local workforce on this project in terms of the employees on the job site? What is the percentage of our local workforce? Does the Minister have those details? If not, can he provide them so I can make another statement in the House before the session is done? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As for the contract awarded to the successful proponent, 55.1 percent of the work is going to be done by local people in Inuvik and 3.2 percent is going to be done by NWT outside of Inuvik. I will confirm to get some additional numbers to the Member, but I can confirm to the Member that there are 50 local Gwich’in residents who started the training required for the Hazmat removal. Of those, 30 local individuals in Inuvik were hired to actually do the Hazmat removal. Most of those remained employed until recently, as the Hazmat removal has actually come to a conclusion to get ready to drop the building. So 30 of the 50 people that were trained did actually obtain employment.
As far as the other numbers, we will get those numbers from the successful proponent and I will share those with you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
