03-29-2019, 12:00 PM
(03-28-2019, 10:14 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:(03-28-2019, 05:09 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: Honestly, how can it cost 8 million dollars to pour some concrete and put up some shelters, it's not like this involves major underground works or grading or retaining walls or something.
I don’t know — but right away I see an opportunity to save some money. In the documents, it plans for building a temporary road around the construction area. But I know that is not needed. How do I know? Am I spouting off outside of my area of expertise? Well, yes, but the road in question is currently closed to motor vehicle traffic and has been so since the LRT was under construction. So it is definitely OK for it to stay that way until the transit construction is done. So they should start by just deleting Stage 1 of the construction. Not sure how much this would save however as most of the digging will still be needed.
On another note, I saw some interesting details. For one, the electrical power specified includes a number of 15kVA installations. If I understand correctly, this rating means that each one could use about 15MW of power. The only thing I can think of in a transit station that would use that much electricity would be rapid charging of electric bus batteries. There are also some radiant heaters listed, but they seem to take 20A single-pole feeds.
So together with the shelters, it’s significantly more than just a paving job (road/sidewalk). It would be interesting to know how much they were expecting to have to pay. Is there confirmation that the price is why the bid is cancelled?
And in reading Addendum #2 they actually removed the temporary road and bus stops from the scope. No buses will use the area until the station is complete. Only a pedestrian path was to be constructed around the area.