(PHOTO: Contractors fill a conference room at the Sawridge Inn to learn about the process for demolition and clean-up in Fort McMurray’s hardest hit areas. SARAH ANDERSON. Reporter.)
Local contractors are encouraged to submit bids in the rapid tendering process that starts Thursday, and will last one week only, for debris removal and clean up of the hardest hit areas of our community.
Nineteen insurance companies have come together to launch a coordinated approach using one project manager that will oversee anywhere from one to five general contractors. The company selected to do the project management is SPECS, based out of Langley, B.C., which did this clean up work in Slave Lake, Kelowna and following the Calgary Zoo fires.
Bill Adams, Regional Vice President for the Insurance Bureau of Canada said following a presentation to business owners here in Fort McMurray presented by the RMWB’s economic development branch that they ultimately would prefer those general contractors be local companies.
“Our hope is that a significant, if not all of that work, goes to local Fort McMurray contractors. We understand, and we heard here today, that there’s many of them who’ve been sitting in work camps for six weeks, many of them have had their own homes destroyed, the economic downturn even before all that is just adding to a sense of frustration and a hope that this might be a bit of a lifeline for some of them,” Adams said. “That’s our hope as well.”
He said at the same time the insurance companies and IBC have an obligation to policy holders to make sure they are seeing competitive rates for the cost of the rebuild, noting that any money spent on demolition and clean up takes away from the money people are able to spend on rebuilding their home. For example, a home worth $670,000 might be insured for $1.5 million but that money must cover the cost of demolition, clean-up, drawing up site plans, building permits, building, and replacing the contents.
He said the insurance companies are obligated to allow individual policy holders to make their own decision as to who does the work at that property but at the same time they should be prudent about what the costs are and offer an alternative that has been part of a competitive bid process.
“This is not a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. This is a competitive bid. We hope that the contractors who are successful in this make a good profit. Profit is a good thing. Excess profit is really taking money out of individual homeowners’ pockets,” he said.
By allowing bidders from outside of Fort McMurray the hope is to keep costs competitive, but Adams made it clear those external companies will have costs local ones don’t in the mobilization of labour and equipment.
He also made it clear the lowest bidder will not necessarily be chosen because the best bids will be assessed based on expertise, competitiveness and whether the company is from Fort McMurray, Alberta or elsewhere with a bias toward local labour, services and companies.
“We understand that we have contractual commitments to our policy holders that we will fulfill. We would prefer that the work goes to Fort McMurray to help infuse that money as close to this community as possible to get the economy rolling again here. We get that. We want that,” Adams said.
The goal is to offer homeowners a competitive and streamlined option for demolition of their damaged homes. Ultimately, though, it’s up to the homeowner to choose the contractor doing the work through their insurance company.
“Homeowners can choose whoever they want to remove the debris from their property, to do the rebuild, that is their prerogative,” said Adams. “What we are attempting to do is to recognize that we’re in a very unprecedented, complex situation here and offer what we hope is an attractive alternative to people who would recognize that, ‘yes, I want to get my home demolished and get the foundation in this fall so we can back in as quickly as possible’ but if everybody is hiring someone different we’re going to have a bottle neck and nobody’s going to get any footings in any time soon.”
That bottlenecking was seen in Slave Lake, he said, and would be compounded here in Fort McMurray because of the sheer scale of the damages.
Dave Wallace, the President of SPECS, would not speak to the media because of a corporate policy but told the room at large the goal is to have demolition work complete in time to start rebuilding before the frost.
Wallace also suggested to the room at large that if their own company wouldn’t be large enough to meet the criteria in the tender that companies come together to form a conglomerate and make their bid together, an admittedly difficult task considering the tight turnaround for the bid.
Keith Finnson with the Fort McMurray Construction Association told MyMcMurray they would aim to do just that by banding together a group of their members to submit a joint bid.
For more information about the tendering process and what the criteria are for submitting a bid, email phanson@specs.ca.
