An architectural firm has been chosen by City Council to move forward with the traffic upgrades proposed by Lloydminster.
IBI Group Professional Services Inc. of Edmonton have been selected to upgrade major traffic infrastructure projects. The firm has no previous experience with the City, but as far as Mayor Gerald Aalbers is concerned that doesn’t play a major role in the selection process.
“We’re looking for the best value for the dollars and as City administration brought forward there’s quite a lengthy discussion about that because there was a variance in the bids.”
IBI had the lowest cost for the project at $32,108.00 where the next lowest bid was over $75,000.00. Aalbers says that even with any extra costs in the project there will be room to budget those necessary expenses with IBI.
“In this case we asked the question do we expect any change orders, right now we don’t expect any so that will be the cost of the project. When we talked about if they did have change orders based on their costs we still had a fair amount of room to move before we’d even come close to reaching the next bid.”
The main part of the project is the College Drive intersection, 25 street and 59 avenue that will see new traffic signals installed. Aalbers says that he expects the installation of the lights to last for 20 years.
“It’s part of our City growing because sooner or later you can’t have uncontrolled intersections on a very major road and certainly College Drive is designed to be a way of moving people, but at the same token because of the development that has gone on south of College Drive we have to make the allowances for the traffic that’s there.”
The total budgeted cost for the project is $1,150,000.