The site sits empty Wednesday morning as crews and equipment have been pulled from the project. Photos by Jeff Turl.
The ongoing saga of the Pinewood Park Drive sanitary sewer expansion has taken a dramatic twist.
The contractor, MX Constructors of Sturgeon Falls and the city have mutually agreed to cancel the contract and go separate ways.
“Basically there have just been too many complications,” MX President Steve Morrison told BayToday at the construction site this morning.
“It had nothing to do with the progress, it had to do with the different issues that were occurring onsite.”
The water problems were one of those bigger issues, caused by the high water table.
“It’s very high and that causes problems not being able to excavate properly and work in dry conditions.” explained Morrison.
“We didn’t expect to encounter that amount of water,” replied Morrison when asked if the tendered amount of the contract was enough to cover expenses.
“We didn’t think that we would have to carry de-watering systems as the tender didn’t indicate that, therefore there was a much larger extra cost.”
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The original tender was for $1.6 million.
Morrison wouldn’t guess at what the actual total would have to be to complete the project, but agreed it would definitely be hundreds of thousands of dollars more.
The city will now have to retender the project, presumably at a much higher cost.
“They are basically going to have to put in the information required for a new tender,” said Morrison and he added he was “not sure at this point” if his company would bid for it.
City Chief Administrative Officer Jerry Knox confirmed to BayToday that he would like to retender early in the new year for a construction start of next spring.
"We have no choice. Commitments have been made," he said
Knox says MX was the lowest tender by a "significant" amount of dollars in the original go-around, but although he suspects there will be extra dollars needed this time he can't tell at this point how much extra it will cost.
And Knox confirmed the split with MX was mutual and that no lawsuits are pending.
"We agreed that we would have to spend significant legal dollars that would be better put back into the project."
Meanwhile, Morrison wasn’t willing to say he didn’t have enough information.
“I think the scope changed. There were a lot of unforeseens on our part and the city’s part and that’s why we mutually agreed to cancel the contract, there’s too many discrepancies."
MX Constructors will be demobilizing from the area and working with the city to restore the site to a reasonably safe level.
All heavy equipment has already left the site.
The City of North Bay will take over the site and commence with the process of retendering the contract. Mayor Al McDonald did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on the situation.
But Morrison appears happy to put an end to the affair.
“As far as I’m concerned,” he said with a smile, “the job is cursed”.
