Contract Awards make for some discussion for City Council Monday evening

Operations Director Richard Pucci was one of two speakers on the 
night Monday to outline the scope of a contract award

The City of Prince Rupert moved forward with a pair of contract awards at the Monday evening session, with North Coast based CT Northern Contractors the successful bidders in both cases, one of them a shared initiative with a larger International group.

As we outlined in our preview of Council on Monday, the first of the two awards to be outlined by Operations Director Richard Pucci, was the City's SCADA communication tower project.

Mr. Pucci who had provided a report for Council (which you can review here)  prior to the session, made note of some of the key elements towards the contract award outlining some of the challenges of the SCADA communication system.

"The current SCADA system has limped along for decades now and and is in a semi failed state, it is the cause for a lot of our water issues where our pumping and everything is a little out of whack because we aren't getting a lot of the communication from that side to this side,  staff have dealt with this the best that we can.

We knew this was an issue and several years ago we put it into our grant funding associated  with the water treatment and water project and we have received funding for that. So we put it into an RFP and we received one compliant bid that was from CTNCA and it's $1, 536,852.60

What this is is to put two new SCADA towers up. One at Montreal Circle and one on the Shawatlan side, this is point of contact system so they have to be able to see each other for communication and that will really eliminate all of our communication issues associated with the operation of our water system because our water system is more removed than other municipalities" -- Operations Director Richard Pucci

Council approved the contract award unanimoulsly, with a few questions to come along with the approval.

Councillor Cunningham asked about the height of the tower, though Mr. Pucci could not provide an answer at the time, stating that he would update Council on that later.

Mr. Cunningham followed up with an observation that he had received some interest from residents of the Crestview area related to the tower proposed for the Montreal Circle location.

Some of our past background on the SCADA project can he reviewed below:

August 23 -- City of Prince Rupert seeks out Bids for SCADA Radio tower plans
July 15-- A tale of Two Towers ... the Chronicles of Prince Rupert 
July 14 -- Location, Location, Location! City selects High Ground in Crestview area for proposed communication tower for water and wastewater supply
July 13 -- City launches bid process for Services related to water supply themes in post Woodworth Dam completion period 
March 10 -- Geotechnical work ahead for City's Shawatlans communication plans

City of Prince Rupert Planning Manager Myfanwy Pope providing
background on a contract award Monday

The Second contract award is a Service Agreement and  is related to the City's Rapid Housing initiative, with CT Northern Contractors Alliance and Graham Capital the successful applicants.

The report from newly promoted Planning Manager Myfannwy Pope (available here) provides some of the background to the Service Agreement.

"These two proponents Graham Capital Partners and CTNCA were chosen as qualified to carry out the proposed projects and they have both agreed to work with all costs recoverable through the grant, so this will add no additional cost to the city.

If successful in receiving the funding, this would result in housing development in the city for affordable housing or non market housing. 

And this would give the city tools to directly add to the housing stock for non market housing which is highly needed in the community.  

The housing that results from this agreement would be informed by recent housing assessment and  other reports the city has received" -- City of Prince Rupert Planning Manager Myfanwy Pope

Towards questions Councillor Cunningham asked if Seniors Housing would be included in the focus for the housing related to the initiative.

Ms. Pope confirmed that Seniors Housing would be part of one of the proposals.

The councillor also asked who Graham Capital is, to which Ms. Pope provided a thumbnail sketch

"Graham Capital is an International Development Company, they have several different types of projects, they have Graham Financial, Graham Contractors and Graham Real Estate. 

And so the Graham Capital Corporation that we would be awarding the contract to is a collection of these that would be able to carry out the application for the funding, and if successful be able to carry out the development of the project itself" -- City of Prince Rupert Planning Manager Myfanwy Pope

Mr. Cunningham then asked for further background on the contract bid process towards the final selection.

The Planning manager offered up a recap of the process that was taken in this instance.

"These two contractors were the top two that we identified, there were three proposals overall and we will be applying for several projects. 

In terms of how much work there is and the time period we would be doing one project per different contractor that we would be awarding the contract to"  -- City of Prince Rupert Planning Manager Myfanwy Pope

Councillor Adey had a follow up question, that related to the other proponents and the other potential projects in the pipeline, as well as to the criteria when it comes to how proponents are selected.

"We want to apply for several options for developing the housing, we do not know if any or all of them could be successful.  

However, because of those options we thought that it may make sense to offer a contract to two of the proposals because the amount of work that goes into preparing a submission would be enough for one contractor ... 

The both agreements to each contractor would result in a number of proposals that go towards this funding in hopes that  get at least one" -- City of Prince Rupert Planning Manager Myfanwy Pope

City Manager Rob Buchan also offered some further background to the award.

"The two selected proponents have shown an ability to deliver on a project like this"

You can review some of the initial request from the BC Bid proposal of early October which we outlined in an item from October 6th.

The Discussion from Monday night towards the two contract awards can be reviewed through the City's video archive starting at the 46 minute mark.

More notes on Monday's Council Session can be explored through our Council Timeline feature.

A wider overview of past Council Discussion themes is available here, while our archive of notes on housing issues in Prince Rupert can be found here.