Ali Howat, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter | [email protected]
Municipal council received a presentation on the activity centre renovation project management during its committee of the whole meeting on Aug. 10.
The Jasper Activity Centre is a collection of town-owned facilities, including the Jasper Fitness and Aquatic Facility and the Jasper Activity Centre/Arena, located on a single block within the townsite.
For the upcoming renovation project, the municipality secured $6,950,000 in grant and municipal tax funding for a major renovation of the facilities.
Council also budgeted just over a million dollars for design and engineering and $200,000 for structural review of the Fitness and Aquatics Centre in 2021.
Given the complexity of this project and the desire to use those dollars most effectively and efficiently, administration felt that they needed to have a dedicated project manager.
Administration issued a request for proposals (RFP) for project management and services through the Alberta purchasing connections on July 16 and the RFP closed on July 30.
The request for proposals received ten submissions from qualified applicants.
In the RFP, administration said the project manager would support the municipality in rationalizing all the various capital projects that are in the budget related to the activity centre and major grant into a comprehensive program that is logical and actionable.
It would also support the municipality in the engagement in other professional services such as design companies, engineering firms or construction contracts.
In addition, the project manager would assist administration with providing ongoing oversight, monitoring and reporting back to council on the project.
鈥淲e wanted to ensure that there is a specific body designated to coordinate those integral workings,鈥� said CAO Bill Given.
CAO Given, the director of operations and the director of culture and recreation reviewed all of the ten applications and scored each one of them and then the reviewers scores were totaled and averaged to give the final score.
The applicants were scored on overview, work program, project team, sustainability, quality control, workplace safety and fee.
The highest scoring came from WSP, which received a final score of 85/100.
Administration鈥檚 recommendation was that committee recommend council award the RFP to WSP in the amount of $90,790 to support the activity centre renovation project.
After some discussion, all council members were in favour and the motion was carried.
Council will make a final decision on the RFP at a future meeting.
The renovation is anticipated to run from fall 2021 through to construction completion in late 2023.
