Spend what's required; details can come later

Maps of the City's Ridley
Island Landfill expansion
(from recent BC Bid package)

The quest for supplies for the City's Ridley Island landfill expansion project has hit some rough patches, with the City's Operations Director Richard Pucci having lost out on a couple of shipments  of important material owing to the city's purchasing policies.

In a report to Council on Monday evening, Mr. Pucci outlined some of the frustrations that the COVID pandemic has brought to the world of procurement, noting how price fluctuations that can change by the day are resulting in missed opportunities to access the supplies required. 

"The operations department recognizes that the ongoing pandemic related disruptions in the supply chain, is really now focused on these long lead items. So we're looking at sourcing this material actually out of Dubai. The material, the cost of the material fluctuates daily and basically we are having challenges having the suppliers hold the prices that will allow us two weeks to come forward and get council approval. The value of this, for these products is going to be around two million dollars, but this is all included within the Capital project for the landfill expansion. So what the request is, is that Council allow us to move forward to purchase these long lead items, get them on a ship over here so that we can have them installed in time for opening the landfill cell and then what I will do is report on the total cost of these items at a later date, once we've secured them and had them shipped over"

In reply to a question from Councillor Blair Mirau,  Mr. Pucci explained that current situation he is facing is as a result of the city's purchasing policies for items over one million dollars.

"It is because the purchase is over a million dollars, so in our purchasing policy we need to get permission from Council for a purchase of that size, we don't have signing authority for that. But there is no way for these guys to be able to hold their rates, as its fluctuating daily with the petroleum price, because that's what this product  is made from. So we need to act immediately, we've already lost opportunities to have it on a boat twice now. So we need to get that here, we have space to house it within our warehouse if it gets here early We just need to secure that long lead item, because everyone is going to be doing landfill expansions and all of these things and we need to secure our materials now"

In follow up conversation, Councillor Niesh offered his support to the purchasing plan and offered up some background to the theme, noting how private industry and construction in particular is facing similar challenges. 

While Councillor Nick Adey observed at to how Mr, Pucci may move ahead to seek out the best price with his new window of purchasing.

Towards the purchase plan, the Mayor offered the full support of Council towards Mr. Pucci's request.

"I think we trust you guys to be a able to pull that off, because I think you guys have been pretty fantastic in terms of cost savings on lots of  different projects we've done"

Curiously the Council members did not take advantage of the briefing to ask if the pandemic related disruptions in the supply chain have impacted on other major projects.  

Missing out on a chance for an update on such  civic ventures as the Shawatlan's Lake Water Dam construction, or ongoing work at the Watson Island Intermodal Trade and Logistics Park, or even when it comes to day to day purchasing by the city's operations department.  

You can review Mr. Pucci's presentation to Council and their signal of the green light on spending from the City's Video Archive page starting at the one hour thirty three minute mark.

More notes on Monday's Council session can be explored from our Council Timeline.

A wider overview of past Council themes is available here.

While some of the past infrastructure notes can be reviewed here.