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King-Victoria Transit Hub
Thanks for pointing that out, and welcome to the forum, JeffH. Would you happen to know how many municipalities in Ontario are similarly bound? Is it something easily avoidable?
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If it means decent benefits and better policing of safety standards, I'm good with it.
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I don't like the term "carpentry" for something that should be a giant brutalist concrete monolith. Big Grin
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It's not easy to avoid, the Region tried quite hard. Some details in The Record at https://www.therecord.com/news-story/565...tion-bids/ and https://www.therecord.com/news-story/448...oo-region/ .

Normally I'm pretty pro-union, but this particular case I have zero support for the union. Two people putting up a garden shed on a Saturday signed union cards and the region ends up bound to hire only from their union for all future projects, costing tens of millions of dollars over the next decade. It's far too much power for such a small action.
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(05-24-2017, 03:53 PM)taylortbb Wrote: It's not easy to avoid, the Region tried quite hard. Some details in The Record at https://www.therecord.com/news-story/565...tion-bids/ and https://www.therecord.com/news-story/448...oo-region/ .

Normally I'm pretty pro-union, but this particular case I have zero support for the union. Two people putting up a garden shed on a Saturday signed union cards and the region ends up bound to hire only from their union for all future projects, costing tens of millions of dollars over the next decade. It's far too much power for such a small action.

And I heard one of the two no longer works for the Region....

Coke
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taylortbb, thanks a lot for the links, that was educational. Thanks again, Jeff, for bringing it up, I think it's something not many people are well-versed in (certainly that's the case for me).
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Just site prep? Request for proposals is still out there right?
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(07-19-2017, 12:29 PM)Spokes Wrote: Just site prep?  Request for proposals is still out there right?

Correct. The old garage/ambulance station had finally fulfilled its use (it was an office/staging area during the underpass construction) and has now been removed.
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I would love to see some kind of a temporary park here, given that construction start is probably still at least 3-4 years away.
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But that wouldn't be in keeping with Downtown Kitchener's longstanding tradition of fenced off gravel pits!
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The pre-qualification stage closed on June 30th. Looks like there was only one submission from a team with EllisDon as the primary. Not sure if there is something with how the Region posts results to their website or if there was really only 1 pre-qual submission. This was supposed to narrow down the teams for the actual RFP.

https://regionofwaterloo.bidsandtenders....#Submitted
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EllisDon did the courthouse. They're highly respected from what I've heard.
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Wasn't EllisDon part of the Toronto Union station work? I imagine there's not a lot of big companies with the experience in this kind of work.
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It's a consortium that also includes Perimeter, which has been a fantastic local developer. If they were to win I'd expect excellent results.

But only getting one submission Is definitely very bad news for the project. All public sector open bids I've worked on like this before require a number of bids, and not getting them means back to the drawing board to re-examine requirements and the plan. I'm hopeful though it just means other bids were submitted in paper form, and that's the only reason they're not on the website.
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(07-20-2017, 02:54 AM)taylortbb Wrote: But only getting one submission Is definitely very bad news for the project. All public sector open bids I've worked on like this before require a number of bids, and not getting them means back to the drawing board to re-examine requirements and the plan. I'm hopeful though it just means other bids were submitted in paper form, and that's the only reason they're not on the website.

This was only a Request for Qualifications, for them to build a short list of recipients for the actual RFP.

The result is disappointing, but the region can either change the process to negotiate with Ellis-Don only and see whether they can arrive at a satisfactory agreement -- or they need figure out how to change the project parameters to make the project more appealing to developers, to get more bidders.  The second option will surely delay the process, maybe up to six months.
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