february 24, 2021
News Advertiser PAGE 5
www.NewsAdvertiser.com
Construction of Mundare Lift Station $65,000 Over Budget Michelle Pinon News Advertiser Construction of the Town of Mundare’s new lift station is $65,000 over budget. Chief Administrative Officer Colin Zyla delivered the news during council’s February 16 meeting. Zyla stated there were $65,000 in change orders, with the majority of those funds being allocated to replacement of the sewer line. “There were other change orders. Our engineering was $60,000 and now we’re expecting it to be $110,000. “It seems like we’ve had kind of a bit of a ban run of cost overruns on projects of late. It’s kind of turning into a bit of a pattern, “stated Mayor Mike Saric. Zyla replied, “But, I mean we can’t do much about engineering. The change orders that came in were to make things safer.” Saric replied, “That’s understandable.” Zyla explained that when the construction company, Taurus Projects Group, was putting in the manholes they discovered the sewer line was in poor condition and needed to be replaced. That, in addition to other change orders drove the price up by $51,000 in addition to engineering costs which had also increased substantially. Zyla said some of the extra costs associated with the engineering are related to changes that were made during construction. “Right now, we are over budget by $38,000. I am estimating that we will incur and extra $27,000 in costs to complete. He does not believe there was a way to foresee the problems. Originally, the town had budgeted $880,000 for the project. The cost overruns had increased the total budget to $945,000. The town had set aside a contingency of $50,000 for the project. Zyla said he expects the Province to pay for 75 percent of the overages as the project was on a 75-25 cost shared basis. Zyla said the new lift station will have a back-up generator
and construction on the project should be complete by the end of March. Zyla also recommended the installation of the SCADA, (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system which records specific data and would serve as a back up to the town’s current call out system. He said staff would be able to access data and the system remotely via phone or computer. The software would also transmit data automatically and give them the ability to create detailed reports from it. The SCADA system would cost an additional $35,000. Saric said it seemed like a duplication of the town’s current system, and he wanted to know what the cost benefit was to having the system, and if it could replace the call out system that is currently in place. Councillor Jason Kowal wanted to know how the SCADA system would save time and money in order to determine if they would be getting their money’s worth if they decided to invest in the system. Kowal made the motion to approve the updated budget. Council did not make a decision on the SCADA system and requested more detailed information be provided to them.
Dan's Quote of The Week
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." -Thomas A. Edison
We W I L L Yo u r
and your laptop too!
F X
PC
Virus Removal, Computer Diagnostics, Data Recovery, System TuneUp and Optimization, Secure Drive Wipe
Computer Repair
Internet Services
s m e t s y S VM VM
780-632-2859
www.VM-Systems.com
sales@vm-systems.com
5006 51 Ave, Vegreville, AB T9C 1R3
