The new Boundary Bay fire hall is moving forward in construction, after Delta council approved $4.8 million in contract awards Monday night (March 12).
The Boundary Bay Fire Hall and Fire Training Facility, located on a 3.29 acre property at the Boundary Bay Airport, has been in the works since 2013. Intended to replace Ladner’s Fire Hall No. 4, it will also include a training centre for Delta firefighters.
“The architect’s done a really good job of taking full use of the land there,” Delta Fire Chief Paul Scholfield said at Monday’s council meeting. “We’ll be able to have car fires and dumpster fires and all sorts of items that we were never able to have before, so we’re pretty excited about that.”
The city had intended to award contracts for the construction of the facility last year, however the design of the building meant those contracts would come in significantly over the project’s $9.6 million budget.
Since then, the project architects have redesigned the building to lower the construction costs.
“It was really simplified,” Scholfield said about the design. “I don’t understand all the details of it, but it went from a highly technical roof to a much more industrial roof, and that saved quite a bit of money.”
The square-footage of the building remained unchanged in the redesign process.
Now, the construction bids came in under budget, allowing director of financial planning Karl Preuss to work in a $600,000 contingency fund.
Council approved all 17 bids, including $974,400 for Anton Electrical Services (2011) Inc. to do electrical work, $881,400 for Triwest Mechanical Ltd. to do mechanical work, $698,250 for ContainerWest Manufacturing Ltd. to build the fire training structures and $633,570 for Mardina Construction Ltd. to do the concrete. A full list of awards is available in staff’s report to council.
In another cost-saving move, the fire hall’s construction will use roofing materials that were originally purchased for the North Delta Recreation Centre. Those materials went unused during the renovation, and will be repurposed for the Boundary Bay facility.
Site preparation is currently underway, and the city is looking to begin hiring firefighters this fall in anticipation of the hall’s opening in March 2019.
The fire hall is expected to have an annual operating cost of $2.5 million.
grace.kennedy@northdeltareporter.com
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