West River Street contract awarded to BEECH Infrastructure – sparks debate among councillors

By Casandra Turnbull

The West River Street water, stormwater and roads project is set to begin in the next few weeks; this week council endorsed a staff recommendation to award BEECH Infrastructure Group Ltd the job. Council’s approval didn’t come without some debate Councillors heard that BEECH Infrastructure was the lowest of eight bids that were submitted at $2 678,573 90 (excluding HST). The second lowest bid came from Sierra Infrastructure Inc at $2,821,071.35. The highest bid was $3,236,307 25 Network Sewer and Watermain Ltd. Before the mayor called for a vote to support the county’s recommendation to hire BEECH Infrastructure, there was some discussion on the current process of selecting winning tenders with several councillors admitting the process should not focus solely on the lowest bid but should take into consideration other factors like the company’s job performance history and quality of work

BEECH Infrastructure is the company at the forefront of another large project underway in the Race Street and Hillside Ave (south end) area of Paris. That project’s predicted timeline has more than doubled and many area residents have filed complaints with the county over how BEECH has conducted business in their neighbourhood Paris Ward 3 Councillors John Pierce and John Bell said they’ve fielded numerous complaints over the state of that project and for that reason they could not support the recommendation to award BEECH another project in town

West River Street watermain and road reconstruction work is set to begin in a few weeks and won’t wrap up until December. Councillors debated on who to award the contract, noting the lowest bid isn’t always the best bid. The project will span the entire street from the Broadway/West River fork in the road all the way to Mechanic Street.

“I think we need to maybe revisit the matrix as to how we reward these contracts I have spoken to Mr. Walton about this,” said Councillor Peirce, who reiterated the importance of this project staying on target since it’s phase one of the big dig that will follow in downtown Paris in the next couple of years He looked at the modest $142,000 price difference between the first and second bid, noting that Sierra Infrastructure did a good job on the Chapel, Dundas and Main Street project Councillor Bell echoed his thoughts. “I do not have the confidence in this particular contractor when I compare this to the one next on the list (Sierra),” said Bell. “The number of complaints I and Councillor Peirce have received on Race Street compared to those of Chapel and Dundas – clearly there is a massive level of dissatisfaction (from constituents), so I cannot support giving them additional work.”

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