The Town of Bonnyville has awarded a bid for the next phase of the 51 Ave. improvements.
Kichton Contracting, whose offices are in Edmonton and Lloydminster, came in with the lowest bid of $3.6 million for construction on 51 Ave.
In total, there were nine eligible bids for the project – with one bid disqualified for being submitted past deadline. The highest bid came in at $6.6 million, but town CAO Mark Power said they're quite pleased with prices they saw.
“The bids are extremely favourable. Let us hope the town office comes in favourable as well. We have 23 contractors for that project.”
The winning bid comes in $1.4 million under budget, and $1.6 million under the engineer's estimate. The next lowest bid came from E-Construction at just under $3.9 million, however, Power noted that they will still be getting work from the project as E-Construction is one of the subcontractors utilized by Kichton.
Set for construction over the summer, the section of 51 Ave. from 50 St. to 55 St. (starting at the Post Office and going west) will be getting redone. To avoid having the same headaches as during last summer's 51 Ave. improvements, the engineer has been meeting with several businesses in the area and has developed guidelines to make it run more smoothly.
“There will be two crews in. The first one will have the first block from the Post Office, west. They'll start the second crew three or four blocks down so there's never two (adjacent) blocks of road closed,” explained Power.
This way, traffic to businesses along that stretch of 51 Ave. can still be accommodated during the day.
In addition to 51 Ave., the tenders also included costs for upgrading 54 St. Kitchon came in with a price of just under $200,000, the lowest bid for that project as well. With tax and a 10 per cent contingency added in, the total tender amount sits at $4.4 million.
“This contractor did work in Ardmore for the MD of Bonnyville and they said they're a good company, and they didn't have any problems,” said Power.
Council awarded the bid to Kichton Contracting at their June 28 meeting. They were told that the contractor has stated work on the roadway should be complete by Oct. 14.
