MUN’s Core Science Facility won’t be ready on time

University reworking major construction tender to keep project on budget

Memorial University and its prime consultants have some brainstorming to do about how to keep the construction of the Core Science Building on budget.

The major construction tender it had issued for the project was cancelled this week, as the bids it received were higher than anticipated. That means some changes need to be made, and the building won’t be operational by September 2019 as planned.

Anne Browne, MUN’s associate vice-president of facilities, could not disclose how high the four bids were, but said its public tender act states it cannot accept a bid more than five per cent higher than planned.

She said while it’s disappointing to have to take back and rework the tender, the most important thing is to remain within the $325-million global budget.

“We really did feel that because things came over, that to be fiscally responsible as we should be on this, that we are going to keep our number as it is and just rework and get back to it, without taking anything away from the building and still having a world-class building that we planned in the first place,” she told The Telegram.

From floors to ceilings

She said MUN will meet with its prime consultants, HOK Canada, next week to pore over the massive plan — which includes 1,500 pages of drawings — and find areas that can be tweaked.

“We already have a good idea of what we’d like to try and do. We’re looking at reworking some of the items within the building itself. We want to ensure that we don’t affect the integrity of the building, so it will not look any different from the outside than it does now,” she said.

Two major cost-saving possibilities being discussed are changes to the building’s ceilings and floors.

“A lot of the new lab buildings in Canada and the U.S. don’t have ceilings in them. Some people like that. So we were putting ceilings in all of our lab spaces. We may decide to take some of those out and that could make a big difference to us financially,” she said.

“The other big one for us, all the floors are rubber floors in and outside the labs. They do last a very long time, but if we go with rubber in the labs and vinyl in the corridors and common areas, we can save an awful lot of money that way. And looking at the quality of the glass in the atrium, looking at different types, that would help us as well.”

She said they’ve already thought of about 30 things that could be changed without compromising the structure’s integrity, such as redundancies in the HVAC systems and the number of exhaust fans.

Browne said they want to move on the tender as quickly as possible. The delay will mean the building won’t be ready in September 2019, but exactly how long it will take isn’t clear yet.

“It will be in 2020, and we’ll be working through with (the prime consultants) as to what that will be — whether it’ll be six months later, and we open in January or we go to September, but we don’t seen anything later than that whatsoever,” she said.