With crews set to begin work to replace a sanitary main line on Tranquille Road next week, the city’s capital projects manager says COVID-19 has led to a change in the scope of the project.
Darren Crundwell says the project is now estimated to cost about $11-million, instead of an anticipated $13-million like was projected back in March.
“We will be making some traffic safety improvements, landscaping improvements, they’re just going to see some changes in terms of the geometry,” he told NL News.
“The primary objective of this project hasn’t changed, it’s still a sanitary main replacement, however we did adjust a few things and it is just trying to save costs to make the project more cost effective given the fact that we’re seeing revenue shortfalls everywhere.”
Work was supposed to get started in March, and be completed by this November. Crundwell says crews have lost about two months of this year’s construction season, because of the pandemic, and now hope to be done by next summer.
“The city of Kamloops – on all projects – will be respecting provincial guidelines for work during the pandemic, and the COVID outbreak,” he said. “So we don’t know what that’s going to do to production and how its going to change productivity and efficiency on the site. We don’t want to be over-promising and under delivering.”
“We debated a spring or summer completion, but again we’re just not sure especially during these times you know.”
Work will be taking place on Tranquille Road from Southill Street to 12th Street, with Tranquille Road completely closed from Southill Street to Desmond Street – near the Brock Shopping Centre – with a detour via Gelrich Avenue.
Crundwell says there will be impacts to area residents and businesses, but noting as significant as compared to when work was done on the Victoria Street West corridor last year.
The first phase of the sanitary replacement project on Tranquille Road, west of Crestline Street towards the airport, was completed in 2017. The City has also applied for $12 million in grant funding to pay for a portion of Phase 3 of the project from Crestline Street to Southill Street, which is set to get underway in 2025.
