Inflation driving the numbers up

Project design committee achieves close to $700,000 in savings

The total cost the project exceeds $23 million

The centre is slated to be completed in the winter of 2023/24

Article by John Campbell

Campbellford - Mon., April 17, 2023 - The Campbellford Recreation and Wellness Centre is still to go up – but the cost of its construction already has because of inflation.

Peter Burnett file photo

Council was forced last week to revise the project’s construction budget upward to $20,875,060 – an increase of $372,160, or 2 per cent.
It would have been even much higher had the project design committee not “worked diligently … to explore all avenues of value engineering” and find $696,505 in savings that “directly offset the increase in the construction budget,” Community Recreation Officer Peter Burnett wrote in a report council received April 11.

The cost-saving measures became necessary because the “continued volatility of the construction market has resulted in the increased cost of essential systems required to operate the facility,” he stated, identifying refrigeration and aquatics as the two components “that have been impacted by price increases over the past year.”

Task Force Engineering, the Belleville company hired to design and build the 64,000-square-foot multi-use facility, asked for the budget to be revised to secure contracts “to lock in prices and avoid further cost increases or construction delays,” Burnett stated. “The increased cost of building in today’s market, combined with the fact that many trades only honour their pricing for an extremely short time, emphasizes the importance that the new construction budget be approved.”
Burnett noted the new cost “has increased the unfunded portion of the project to $3,220,743.”

The original financing plan for the building’s construction included taking out a $8.5 million loan to cover the municipality’s share of the project’s costs. The federal and provincial governments are contributing $7.6 million and the Campbellford-Seymour Community Foundation $1.5 million.

Lynn Phillips file photo

Chief Administrative Officer Lynn Phillips told council last November the municipality will dip into three reserve funds to increase its contribution to the project to $10.8 million, or 47.5 per cent of the total project.
Even so, she said then, close to $2.8 million still needed to be found to pay for the facility’s ice pad, lane pool, therapy pool and fitness centre.

Burnett said in his report last week that staff continue to investigate “alternate sources of funding” from the federal and provincial governments, “as well as through a sponsorship/naming rights program.”

He added Trent Hills “has raised the issue of COVID-19 construction pricing, and the impact it has had on the total cost of this project” with the provincial minister of infrastructure in “hopes of developing a solution and securing additional funds.”

Burnett told council at its meeting last Tuesday that the project design committee was “very, very pleased” to have achieved close to $700,000 in savings as a result of an “exhaustive process … without compromising the building’s operation (and), in some cases, (it ended up) actually improving it.”
He offered as examples the decision to use polished concrete and epoxy coatings in wet areas in place of tiles. It’s cheaper and easier to clean, he said.

Burnett told council the municipality’s operating partner, YMCA Northumberland, had requested a number of items be added during the design process but they were subsequently removed, except for one which the agency agreed to cover.

The total cost the project now exceeds $23 million, when expenditures for its design, site preparation, and management are included.

Four years ago the cost was pegged at $17 million – before COVID threw a monkey wrench into everything.

The centre is slated to be completed in the winter of 2023/24.

Recreation and Wellness Centre design image from Municipality of Trent Hills website