Lift station delays, overruns raise Carew’s ire

By Mark Squibb

Construction delays have forced the Town of Paradise to pony up more consultant fees for the St. Thomas Line Pump Station project.
The project was initially scheduled to be completed by the end of December 2024 but has been delayed until the end of August.
“The consultant has exhausted current budgets for contract administration services, site inspection services, and material testing services, and an increase in these budget line items is required,” said Deputy Mayor Kimberley Street.
To that end, R.V. Andersen, prime consultant on the project, requested a change order of $436,039, HST included.
Street said the delay could be contributed to a number of factors, including the force main break and state of emergency in 2024, delays in procurement and delivery of materials to the site, and project disputes.
Street said given the approval of the change order, the project will exceed the $24 million budget by $119,165. However, when councillor Glen Carew asked how much the Town has spent on the project since its approval in December 2022 — including all change orders except the most recent one — Chief Administrative Officer Lisa Niblock said staff will be completing a full report on the actual cost in the coming weeks.
Carew then referred to a private, or ‘privileged,’ meeting between staff and council on August 5 that he said turned contentious.
“The memo here tonight generated a highly contentious discussion in a privileged meeting a little while back, and I made an apology to staff and council for my passionate and emotional behavior and I extend that apology to staff and my council colleagues here tonight in the public meeting,” said Carew.
The councillor then expressed his feelings about the most recent change order and the project at large.
“It’s no secret around the table that I was not in favour of the current project,” said Carew. “I voted ‘No’ on December 20, 2022, not because the project wasn’t by far the absolute best option for the town, but because of the immense cost to residents— some $23.5 million. And seeing we had funding approved on the original cost estimate of $12.6 million, that would see the Town locked in for about $8 million in provincial and federal funding.”
Carew said he is looking forward to soon seeing the actual project cost and began describing some of the discussion that took place in the private meeting of August 5 when the change order was initially brought before council.
“Many questions were asked at the privileged meeting by council, and we were informed that a legal opinion had been sought on the matter,” said Carew. “The legal opinion was that the engineering contract language for the project—.”
At that moment, Niblock interrupted to note that legal opinions are privileged. Mayor Dan Bobbett suggested that council recess if Carew wanted to continue discussing the matter. Council then went into a private meeting that lasted for about six minutes.
Following the interruption for the private session, Carew apologized for his misunderstanding of the matter and praised staff’s ongoing efforts related to the project.
“We have been told that staff have worked exceptionally hard with the owner-advisor (R.B. Andersen) to quantify, scrutinize, and minimize any and all the costs associated, as reflected in the memo, and that our work by staff, at least my takeaway from that discussion, was that we are essentially contractually responsible for the delay cost,” Carew said. So, as much as I would really prefer not to vote for this memo, it would most likely be financially punitive to taxpayers in this town to vote ‘No,’ and so I enthusiastically vote in favour of this memo.”
The remainder of council voted in favour of the motion without further discussion.
The St. Thomas Line Pump Station is set to replace Lift Station 10 at the corner of St. Thomas Line and Topsail Road. Lift Station 10 suffered a major malfunction in 2019, spewing sewage onto a neighbouring house and costing the Town over $1.5 million in emergency measures to pump sewage into trucks and dispose of it at other sites. The lift station suffered a second costly malfunction in 2024.
Following the initial breakdown in 2019, council hired R.V. Anderson Limited to act as prime consultant to oversee upgrades to the lift station in the amount of $432,658 plus HST. That was in June of 2020.
Original pre-tender estimates for construction of a new station came in at $12.6 million and a secondary estimate accounting for inflation came in at $16.9 million. However, when the work was put to tender, the bids came in much huger, with the lowest hovering around $23.6 million.
At the time, R.V. Andersen presented council with three options — replace the lift station; increase the level of service at the old one using existing and new parts and create a clearing for staff to fix issues as they arise; or replace certain parts and continue making repairs as the needs arise.
The matter was hotly debated, and councillors Larry Vaters and Glen Carew voted against construction of the new lift station, citing the exorbitant cost. The remainder of council voted in favour of building the new lift station, and on December 20, 2022, awarded the contract to Olympic Construction Limited, in the amount of $23,590,775, HST included.
Construction began in January 2023, with an expected completion date of December 2024.
In October 2023, council approved a change order for $2.3 million, HST included, payable to R.V. Andersen for additional consulting work given the increase in the scope of the project. That change order anticipated a construction completion date of December last year. The most recent data indicates construction won’t be finished until the end of this month. The change order approved last week will cover the cost of the contract extension and additional engineering fees.