City approves final amount for completion of weir rehab

The rehabilitation of the historic Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) weir has been a costly project for the City of Swift Current due to various unforeseen events during the construction period.

City General Manager of Infrastructure and Operations Mitch Minken presented the final report to a regular council meeting on Feb. 24 and councillors approved an additional amount of $170,000 to close out this project.

The total amount previously authorized for this project already came to $1,075,000 and this additional amount of $170,000 will be reallocated from the remaining carryover budget for the 2019 paved lane rehabilitation and paved street rehabilitation capital projects.

The original value of this project, which was awarded to Timber Restoration Services in May 2019, was $477,816.34 (PST included, GST excluded). The contract for the construction administration and environmental services for the project was carried out by the engineering consulting company WSP and Wood Research Development (WRD) determined the heritage requirements of the project.

After the start of construction work the contractor discovered deep scour holes that compromised the structure, and council approved an additional $350,000 in September 2019 for emergency repair work.

“This is unfortunate,” Councillor Pat Friesen said about the final cost of the project. “We started out with a number much smaller than what we’re ending up with, but I liken this to renovating an old house. Once you get into it, you have no idea just what’s going to be there and as you’ve outlined here, there’s many things that came about once we got started with this project and unfortunately they all cost us money. So even though it’s disappointing to see the cost, as great as it is, the work is done now and we’ve got it done properly and we can move forward.”

Her sentiment was shared by other councillors. Mayor Denis Perrault noted this was one of the few items during his 10 years on council that went over budget. According to Minken, this was one of the most challenging projects the City had to deal with, and the difficulties already started before construction.

“First of all, we had no drawings or anything from the last reconstruction of that weir, which we believe probably happened sometime in the ‘50s,” he said after the meeting. “So we were going into it without much research or not knowing what was there. As we uncovered things and started to work, then things came up that required attention. It’s good in the fact that we’ve got all engineered solutions and now we’ve got a structure that’s going to last and will be there for another 50 years.”

An inspection of the structure was done in the fall of 2018, when some of the spillway boards were removed. It was not possible during this inspection to identify the issues that became evident when rehabilitation work started.

“It’s a fairly large structure,” he said. “If we were to open it all up, we were halfway through demolition for construction. So we were only able to open up a small portion for inspection.”

There were several unforeseen events during construction that played a role in the higher cost of the project. Saskatchewan Occupational Health and Safety issued a letter of contravention and required the presence of a rescue boat and a water rescue person on site whenever work was done in the creek bed.

“That came about after an inspection by the Saskatchewan Occupational Health and Safety,” he said. “The contractor said they had never dealt with that in previous projects. So that was something new and unforeseen.”

The extent of the structure’s deterioration was exposed during construction. The scour holes were discovered, the piles were in worse condition than initially thought, and additional piles had to be repaired. The east wall connection required a revised design, because the construction method was not feasible after the east side was opened up. The west wall connection also required a revised design, because the viewing platform was resting on the existing timber elements of the weir.

Construction took longer due to additional engineering, environmental and safety regulations, as well as some changes to construction methodology. Earlier than normal winter weather caused challenging construction conditions within the creek.

A release of water from the Duncairn Dam resulted in higher water levels and turbidity curtains in the creek were washed away. These curtains had to be reinstalled and an additional fish rescue was required. Minken noted the City was able to actually reduce project cost with about $100,000 when revisions were made during the construction period.

“During this process of having to do additional works, we worked hard with WSP as our construction supervising consultant and with Timber Restorations Services and WRD, the engineer, to make sure that we got the most practical and cost-effective solution that we could get,” he said.

The weir is a heritage structure and the intention therefore was to save as much of the original structure as possible or otherwise any replacement material had to be similar to the original product. Due to the extent of structural deterioration, a large part of the original structure was replaced.