The City of Nelson expects to save up to $100,000 on its Josephine Street water main replacement project after opting to complete most of the work internally.
Chief financial officer Chris Jury told council Tuesday the $660,000 project is on track to finish under budget despite several unexpected challenges uncovered during construction.
“Financially the jobs doing really well. We’ll likely come in quite a bit under budget. All of the underground work, the utilities went really well.”
Jury said city crews encountered several challenges, including buried trolley tracks, electrical infrastructure and other obstacles while replacing aging water infrastructure beneath the downtown street.
He said had the work been contracted out, those discoveries could have resulted in higher costs.
“If you had a contractor do these, you’d be dealing with change orders and they’d be adding costs. We were able to pivot, be flexible and do that with our own crews,” he said.
The city originally budgeted to have the project completed by a third-party contractor but ultimately shifted the work to city crews in an attempt to make use of staff during periods of low winter workloads.
“That was part of our whole strategy of saying we have these seasons where maybe there’s a low snowfall and rather than do snow removal, can we be more productive?,” Jury said. “And that was one that they pivoted to.”
Jury said the approach allows the city to be more flexible while reducing its exposure to rising construction costs and other market pressures.
“We’re more resilient to those types of things and we can do these things ourselves,” he said.
The project began in February and involves replacing water infrastructure along the 400 and 500 blocks of Josephine Street. At the time, the city said the upgrades would replace water systems about 100 years old, improve water quality and reliability and reduce the risk of service disruptions in the downtown core.
Jury estimated the project will finish between $60,000 and $100,000 below budget, although final costs have not yet been determined.
“I know there’s been some stuff out there on social media about how we did with line painting or the bump outs or things like that but overall, from like a financial perspective, that job’s doing very well.”
Jury was referencing a portion of the project on the 400 block of Josephine between Baker and Vernon streets that drew some public criticism over aspects of the finished surface work, specifically curb construction and line painting.
He acknowledged that there had been challenges, including what he described as miscommunication with a line-painting contractor. However, he said the city’s overall strategy of completing more infrastructure projects in-house remains sound.
He also pointed to a relatively young city crew.
“It’s a younger crew. I think they tried really hard to do some good work there. They did have some challenges,” he said.
“There was also some miscommunication with the line painting company, and we’re going to be reaching out to them and trying to see how we can have better communication in the future to kind of avoid those types of things happening. “
That said, the financial impact of correcting those issues was relatively minor compared with the overall project budget.
Jury said city crews completed the repairs for about $6,000. Had a contractor done the work, it could have cost $15,000.
Be the first to know! Don’t miss out on breaking news and daily updates in your area. Sign up to MyNelsonNowNews Alerts.
