New contractor PCL Constructors is working under a $1.95 billion “target-cost” contract to finish the project, which includes incentives if it can bring it in under budget, but project critics are still not reassured.
Construction on Metro Vancouver’s $3.86 billion North Shore wastewater treatment plant is ramping back up this month under a “target-cost” contract with its new contractor, PCL. But the final price tag is still not set in stone.
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Metro had already spent $737 million on the beleaguered project as of October, the latest figure available. That close to the initial total budget for the project when it was approved in 2017.
A new $1.95 billion contract awarded to PCL Constructors West Coast Inc. to finish the job is on a “target-cost” model, designed to encourage hitting that limit, according to Metro Vancouver’s project manager, Joe Cohrs.
“If they exceed that budget, there are penalties in their contract, and if they come under that budget, they have incentives for that in the budget as well,” Cohrs said during a tour Wednesday for journalists.
The 3½-block site was a hive of activity with some 250 tradespeople intertwining new rebar into the rusted ends of the unfinished structure that sat dormant for months at Pemberton Avenue and West First Street.
The air was full of the sounds of concrete trucks, pouring their material into pumps that are building up the long walls of the secondary treatment plant.
Workers have made decent progress on completing the new plant’s 36-metre-tall digester towers at the west side of its site, which look out to a panoramic view of the Lions Gate Bridge, where crews have already run the pipes that will carry the plant’s effluent to an outfall at the entrance of Burrard Inlet.
Metro Vancouver board chair Mike Hurley said the regional district is “very confident that it will be delivered for what we have now budgeted.”
Metro, however, is reaching that point of confidence after almost five years of delays and spiralling costs that led Metro to fire its initial contractor, Acciona Wastewater Solutions LP. Duelling lawsuits over which side was responsible for the ballooning budget that are still not resolved.
Construction deficiencies, rising labour costs, inflation in material prices, and delays during the COVID-19 pandemic all played roles in breaking the budget, but the complete story of the overrun might not be known until those lawsuits are resolved.
Cohrs pointed out one of the obvious deficiencies, an angular patch of new concrete in the south wall of the secondary treatment structure and pointed to photos that showed the crumbling material that needed to be carved out and rusting rebar beneath it.
Metro dropped the bombshell news of the plant’s revised $3.86 billion almost a year ago, then in June, 2024, approved a cost-sharing proposal for its $2.83 billion overrun that saddled North Shore property owners with $590 a year in additional sewer-service fees for up to 30 years.
“All taxpayers across the region are paying large increases because of this project and some of them are angry,” Hurley said.
“I’m very angry that we got to this point, but I absolutely acknowledge the burden that’s been placed on taxpayers here, but we still believe that Metro Vancouver, at $875 (a year) for the average household, it is still very good value,” Hurley added.
Hurley said Wednesday’s event was a display of “the professionalism of PCL getting on with the work,” as the workforce is ramped up.
PCL had some 250 tradespeople on site Wednesday, mostly working on building forms and pouring concrete for the sturdy structures needed to house the stacked pools of the secondary clarifying tanks, which is expected to take the next 24 to 26 months.
Its workforce will increase to a peak around 650 by 2026-27 when installation of piping, machinery and electrical systems will take place.
However, reassurances that the project is on track are little comfort to North Shore residents stuck with the lions share of the bill on an individual homeowner basis.
“Maybe they should start running taxpayer tours so they can, you know, see where there $4 billion is going,” said North Vancouver District Councillor Catherine Pope. “I don’t think it’s going to make them any happier.”
Pope was among municipal representatives from cities around the region who have been calling for a independent provincial inquiry into what went wrong on the project.
Last summer, Metro commissioned its own independent audit of the project, but Pope still wants the province to step in with at least an audit by B.C.’s Auditor General if not a full inquiry.
“The main thing it’s going to do, I believe, is restore public trust in this institution, Metro, to carry on with this project,” Pope said. “But also with the other billion-dollar projects we’re all facing in the coming years.”