Ambitious school-building blitz plagued by delays
Dozens of projects are over budget with little hope of recouping losses
Two years after the provincial auditor chastised the former Progressive Conservative government for promising dozens of new schools it couldn’t build on time, at least 42 are still unfinished.
Of 195 construction projects promised by two premiers — the largest new school and modernization blitz in Alberta’s history — work hasn’t even started on at least six and one was cancelled altogether, an analysis by Postmedia shows.
Furthermore, many of the projects managed by Alberta Infrastructure are over-budget. Two are more than 20 per cent over the original price.
Information provided by the ministry for 29 of the projects they manage shows 25 of them have cost-overruns. (School boards oversee some of their own construction projects, while Alberta Infrastructure takes the lead on others.)
The construction blitz was badly needed and followed a relative drought of infrastructure investment in education, Mary Martin, president of the Alberta School Boards’ Association, said in a recent interview.
It was a steep learning curve for school divisions to manage several construction projects at once, she said.
“Everybody wants to celebrate a new school, especially when there’s been tremendous advocacy and a need demonstrated,” Martin said. “Communities have expectations that when these announcements are made, there will be a school in the ground, and I think to the greatest extent possible, school jurisdictions do a good job.”
Education Minister David Eggen announced in October 2015 after taking office that 101 of the 195 school builds initiated by the previous government were delayed, and asked Alberta’s auditor general to investigate.
As of early 2018, 42 of those 101 projects are further delayed, according to data compiled by Postmedia.
The government did not attempt to recoup any money from contractors for delays because the construction contracts contain no financial penalty clauses for lateness, Alberta Infrastructure said in response to an August freedom of information request.
Every school delay came with a different explanation: A wildfire. A surprise, underground foundation from decades past. Relentlessly wet weather. Change of build site. Adding a community hall to the building. A steel shortage. A belated choice to include solar panels.
School divisions can’t sacrifice quality for construction speed, Martin says. These are community investments that serve generations of families.
“When these schools open, and open well-built, those waits will, I think, fade pretty quickly,” Martin said. “I think kids will be happy to have these spaces — and they are beautiful spaces.”
Eggen said in a February statement his government is cleaning up the “massive backlog ” in school construction the PC government left behind.
“Unlike the previous government, who announced schools without a plan to actually build any of them, we’re putting our money where our mouths are and ensuring that every announcement we make, has the funding and the planning attached to lead to a new school opening,” he said.
‘THE SYSTEM FAILED’
In 2012, Alberta’s population was booming, and schools were under pressure.
On top of a 2011 commitment to build 35 new schools, then-PC premier Alison Redford campaigned on a promise to build 50 new schools and modernize 70 others within the next four years.
Called the “Phase 2” school build, cabinet ministers announced locations in 2013 and 2014.
In October 2014, then-PC premier Jim Prentice announced “Phase 3” of the school builds, including 55 new builds and 20 modernizations, 70 of which were to be completed by September 2017. Phases 2 and 3 together were to cost $4.6 billion.
By the time the NDP took office in 2015, more than half of the projects were behind schedule.
Auditor general Merwan Saher’s April 2016 report was scathing, saying, “the system failed.”
Completion dates politicians promised were unreasonable and created false public expectations. Civil servants failed to tell government its goals were unattainable, Saher wrote.
In some cases, the former government announced the projects before checking if the land was available, connected to utilities such as water and sewer, properly zoned, or before determining if environmental and geotechnical assessments had been done, the auditor said.
Now, the government won’t commit construction funding to a project without these checks first.
Saher said the Tories also neglected to put enough money into the budget to start many of the projects on time.
He did not look into costs. The NDP government has worked hard in the last three years to fix the issues Saher identified and ensure schools are announced with proper planning in place, said Alex Middleton, who was infrastructure press secretary in February.
Not all the delays were due to issues Saher identified, but some were, he said, although the ministry will not specify how many.
Infrastructure Minister Sandra Jansen said last week she’s taken a special interest in ensuring government projects stick to their schedules.
“If there are significant delays, I would have my eye pretty closely on them,” she said.
Cost-overruns on some projects are due to unforeseen structural problems or changes to the project, not delays, according to Alberta Infrastructure.
Saher made nine recommendations, all of which the government adopted, Alberta Infrastructure spokeswoman Haley Brown said in an email last week.
Divvying up each ministry’s responsibilities in a 2017 memorandum of understanding was one of the changes.
As of March, government also uses a “gated” approval process for school construction, where school districts must provide more detail about the scope, budget, enrolment projections, site readiness and other information before giving them a green light.
As of April 1, Alberta Infrastructure manages all school construction funding instead of Alberta Education, Brown said.
“As with any major construction project, there are bound to be some delays, but we remain steadfast in our commitment to these communities and families to get these schools open,” Brown said.
Among Saher’s recommendations was for government to improve public reporting on school builds.
The department’s projects.alberta.ca website listed 259 school build projects as of Friday, searchable on a map of Alberta or by municipality. The department said the list is updated monthly.
However, the infrastructure department has a second website, majorprojects.alberta.ca, where it also enumerates publicly funded builds, including pipelines, factories, residences, hospitals and more. The 41 schools listed Friday on the “major projects” website have different information on each project that does not always match the information on the school “projects” site.
Brown said the “major projects” website is targeted to investors looking for “economic development opportunities,” and that the province will add a disclaimer to the website to verify the information with the ministry.
HOW DELAYS HAPPENED
In many cases, needs or situations changed after the government announced the projects and their timelines.
Calgary Catholic Schools had first planned to build the new All Saints High School in the southeast Seton district. When the development around the school site wasn’t proceeding as quickly as hoped, the board opted to move the school to the Legacy area in Calgary’s south tip, where the site would be serviced sooner, spokeswoman Tania Van Brunt said earlier this month.
When Red Deer Public Schools received funding for a new school in the city’s northeast in September 2015, the site wasn’t serviced, spokesman Bruce Buruma said earlier this month.
The board opted to build Don Campbell Elementary School in the city’s southeast instead, he said: “That was not where we originally needed or wanted it.”
First announced in 2014, construction of a new Catholic elementary school in Morinville can’t start until the land is serviced. The former government approved the project without proper planning, Brown said.
Other school districts building on existing sites or modernizing buildings had unpleasant surprises.
Although geotechnical tests were done on land in the hamlet of Ashmont before work began on a replacement school, workers found a mysterious old building foundation that contained asbestos and needed careful removal, said Doug Fedoruk, director of facilities and transportation at the St. Paul Regional Education Division.
In Red Deer, the public school board revisited its already-approved plan to modernize Westpark Middle School when engineers found replacing the building was more cost-effective than renovation. The board took the project to tender twice, because the first set of bids were over-budget, prompting another delay, Buruma said. The provincial government won’t allow district-managed projects to go over budget.
AFTER-THE-FACT ASSESSMENTS
In Condor, 50 km west of Red Deer, the planned modernization of David Thompson High School was derailed when the school division learned the nearby sewage lagoon was inadequate, and needed a pricey expansion, Wild Rose school division superintendent Brad Volkman said. Geotechnical and site surveys were done after government had approved the project in October 2014.
With no level of government willing to upgrade the lagoon, the school division will close the school within four years, Volkman said.
Three-and-a-half years after the government announced the renovation, the school division is back to square one, asking for money to modernize nearby schools instead.
As of September 2017, the government had spent nearly $393,000 planning a renovation that will never happen.
The ordeal left parent Vicki Bradford frustrated. Her sons are in grades 8 and 9 at David Thompson, where the gym ceiling tiles are falling apart. Once, a piece of tile fell on her son’s friend’s head. The state of the gym prevents the school from inviting other teams for volleyball or basketball tournaments, she said. One frigid day this winter, part of the school had no heat.
“I think politics plays a huge factor in all of this,” Bradford said. “Because we are a rural area, and we all voted conservative, I think they (couldn’t) care less.”
Some project delays came at a school board’s request — particularly in rural communities, where residents fundraised to add community meeting spaces to the building.
Such was the case in the Town of Bashaw, where citizens raised more than $1 million to expand the size of a renovated school gym, said Diane Hutchinson, spokeswoman for the Battle River School Division.
Delays aren’t always bad if they allow for more community input or improvements to the project, said Bevan Daverne, superintendent of the Golden Hills School Division in southeastern Alberta.
Strathmore’s George Freeman K-9 school will open a year later than government promised. In that time, the build evolved into a joint project with the town and the county to include a new community recreation centre, Daverne said.
HOW WE DID IT
In an attempt to find out how many of the Phase 2 and 3 projects were completed on time, Postmedia filed a freedom of information request in October 2017 to Alberta Infrastructure. Postmedia asked for a list of all construction projects announced in 2014 and 2015 that were delayed three months or more from their original timeline. Postmedia also requested planned and actual project costs, and planned and actual completion dates, the cause of delays and any contingency plans for delays.
Alberta Infrastructure estimated the request would cost $12,528 to fulfil.
Postmedia narrowed its request to a list of all school projects announced in 2014 and 2015, along with the costs and timelines of projects managed by Alberta Infrastructure alone.
In December, Alberta Infrastructure provided a list of 82 school projects, along with timelines and costs. One was a Phase 1 project, and excluded from the analysis. Using public government records, local news reports and information from dozens of school divisions, Postmedia pieced together the timelines and some costs of 62 more projects.
Of the 143 Phase 2 and 3 projects examined, 130 were completed later than the originally announced dates. The delays ranged from a month to approximately three years. Fifty-three of them will be ready for students one year or longer after the promised opening.