Oak Bay awards Humber design for Uplands sewer separation

A next significant step in the Uplands Sewer Separation Project is underway as Oak Bay awards the Humber Catchment detail design work McElhanney Consulting Services Ltd.

“They’ve done previous work so they’re quite familiar,” said acting mayor Kevin Murdoch. “It came well under the estimated budget and so forth so we’re good to go.”

The Uplands neighbourhood currently has a single pipe system, built in the early 1900s, to convey both sanitary sewage and storm water. During heavy rainfall, the volume of water exceeds the capacity of the system, sending overflows into the ocean at the Rutland and Humber pumping stations.

Oak Bay issued a Request for Proposals on June 15 seeking proponents to provide professional engineering services to deliver a detailed design of a new storm drain system to service the Humber Catchment. This system will consist of approximately 4,500 metres of new storm drain, catch basin leads and service laterals. The ultimate intent of the RFP was to have two separate design packages ready for tendering no later than March 2018 to meet grant requirements.

Oak Bay was awarded $324,958 for the Uplands Combined Sewer Separation Project and $1,150,172 for the completion of the Henderson Water Main Project. The Uplands funding is for design work. The Henderson Water Main Project would provide redundancy for the provision of water to Oak Bay. The district had its portion of the funding, 13 per cent, in reserve.

The RFP also included a second portion which allows the District to exercise the option to extend the services of the successful proponent to include the tendering and construction inspection/administration services related to one or both of the tenders resulting from this design work.

McElhanney Consulting Services Ltd. andStantec Consulting Ltd. submitted proposals – each consisting of two envelopes: the first containing the technical proposal and the second containing the financial proposal.

The RFP stipulated that technical proposals must achieve a minimum score of 70 per cent in order to be considered technically qualified. The financial proposals for firms that did not achieve the minimum technical score were not to be opened. The proposal evaluation team found the technical proposal submitted by Stantec did not achieve the minimum score. The financial proposal was not opened.

The evaluation team found the McElhanney technical proposal contained strong level of detail related to the proposed general approach, list of activities, and the proponent’s understanding of the District’s objectives. The evaluation team then opened McElhanney’s financial proposal of $200,614.60 to provide the deliverables captured in their technical proposal.

The 2017 budget for the Uplands Sewer Separation project is $391,543. About $80,000 is allocated to fund eligible activities from April 2016 to October 2016, some of which include consulting engineering fees and the geotechnical survey. The remaining amount of $311,815 is the estimated cost for the detailed design of the Humber catchment.