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Birds and the bees
Private school rugby
The best way to have ‘the talk’ with your kids is by not having it all. Community, Page A3
Glenlyon Norfolk and St. Michaels meet for the first time on the rugby pitch. Sports, Page A19
Friday, March 16, 2012
Local Market Expert
JIM BAILEY
Proudly serving Esquimalt & Victoria
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www.vicnews.com
Up and Up Engineering firm explains cost escalation in bridge project from $77M to $92.8M Roszan Holmen News staff
Sharon Tiffin/News staff
A welder works on deconstruction of the Johnson Street rail bridge. Pieces are being loaded onto a barge in the waterway under the bridge. The estimated construction cost of the replacement traffic bridge took a jump this week.
Job prospects brightening Brittany Lee News staff
Jobs in construction, wholesale and retail and the finance, insurance and real estate sectors will be the top areas to find a job in Greater Victoria this spring. That’s according to a quarterly report released Tuesday by employment services company Manpower Inc. “We’ve seen more companies hiring permanent jobs and temporary positions, so it looks like it’s getting a little bit better for people out there getting jobs,” said Jeff Polkinghorne, branch manager for
Manpower Vancouver. Seventeen per cent of employers in Victoria said they planned to hire new staff between April and June, up from seven per cent last quarter. The survey predicts a 34-per-cent increase in employment for the construction industry, 18 per cent for finance, insurance and real estate, and a 21 per cent in the wholesale and retail sector. However, this increase in hiring trends for the Capital Region is lower than last year’s rate of 30 per cent. PLEASE SEE: Job outlook rosier, Page A4
Ten days after Victorians learned they’d received an extra $16.5-million federal grant for the Johnson Street Bridge replacement, the cost of the project rose by approximately the same amount. City staff announced earlier this week that the estimated cost has jumped from $77 million to $92.8 million. Mayor Dean Fortin called the revised budget “surprising, and frustrating and disappointing.” “It’s lost opportunity on the funding we received from the federal government,” he said. Yesterday, after the News’ press deadline, council was scheduled to consider options for proceeding with the project. Back in 2010, engineering firm MMM Group assured council that a 15-per-cent contingency would be ample to cover any unexpected costs for the project. It turns out the company, charged with overseeing the project, was mistaken. Stantec Consulting was also mistaken. The engineering firm peerreviewed the cost estimate done by MMM and approved it, recommending only a slightly higher contingency. “There are a number of significant risks on the project that we understand better now than we did
two years ago,” Joost Meyboom, an engineer with MMM Group. “Those risks need to be mitigated and the cost of that mitigation is the cost increase that we’re talking about.” Take the Telus duct relocation project announced in October, for example. MMM negotiated with the utility to move the communications duct to avoid the very expensive risk of cutting it during construction. The new, more cautious plan had an estimated budget of $2.4 million. Now that the city’s portion of the work is complete, the actual cost has proven quite a bit higher: $3.7 million. Another pricey addition to the budget resulted from a geophysical survey conducted by MMM in early 2011. It mapped out the floor of the Inner Harbour and discovered the bedrock varies much more widely than expected. The survey, however, is only a snapshot. “To go to construction with that level of information is risky,” said Meyboom. “If it’s wrong … you’re going to have a contractor out there for $3,000 an hour standing by while they figure out where the bedrock really is.” Therefore, MMM recommends spending more money up front on a detailed drilling map. PLEASE SEE: Second major increase, Page A13
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