Roof of northwest Edmonton police campus leaking, project likely delayed 1 year

The City of Edmonton discovered “issues with the roof” towards the end of construction during a standard inspection of the Edmonton Police Service northwest campus project, and that’s leading to delays.

On Friday, city officials said the roof is leaking and they can’t move EPS staff into the building because the ceiling is dropping and there are water spots on the ceiling tiles.

According to a city news release, the EPS campus project is on budget but projected to be one year behind schedule due to the roof issues.

“Our in-service date for this facility is Q1 of 2019 that has obviously come and past,” said Jesse Banford, director of facility infrastructure delivery. “Right now, we’re doing that investigation.

“We anticipate [the] earliest forecast to have this facility open would be the first half of 2020.”

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Officials said investigators are trying to determine the root cause of the issues and develop a plan forward. They said the issues with the roof started being revealed this past winter, during some freeze-thaw cycles.

“There are certain areas… It’s not just contained to one spot,” Banford said.

He didn’t have an exact number but said it’s more than 10 spots.

“Know that one location where any leak is — and where the water drops and drips to — it could be just one isolated spot where the water is coming in,” Banford said.

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One challenge is the size of the roof.

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“Three acres, very big. It’s a gorgeous-looking facility,” he said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "Three acres, very big. It's a gorgeous-looking facility," he said.

“So when we go in there, we’re very strategic of: where do we want to look? Where do we want to do this testing? Some of it has some destructive tests — we peel back some of the roof and do some of those leak tests…We’re very precise.”

Watch below: Some roof issues, including leaks, have been discovered in the newly constructed northwest Edmonton police campus. Jesse Banford with the city explains the problems.

1:33 Northwest Edmonton police campus roof has leaks

The city says it needs to “ensure the contractor addresses what we call deficiency work.”

“The project budget is $107 million. We’re holding the line,” Banford said.

The 183,000-square-foot facility will house a division station, arrest processing facility, information management and approval centre, recruit training learning centre and vehicle maintenance area.

“It does present some challenges in relation to the different aspects of the business that are going to be moving there, which includes our training for recruit training and in-service training, our divisional station for northwest division, our investigation management approval centre,” Acting Deputy EPS Chief Chad Tawfik said.

“It does have some impacts but we have to be adjustable and flexible to make it work.”

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“We keep business going… We have to do some contingency planning around what the impacts of the delay will be, such as the facilities that we’re currently in and the capacity in those,” Tawfik said.

Work on the northwest EPS campus started in the summer of 2016 and the city said Friday it is “nearly complete.”

Tawfik said the police department has been in continuous contact with the city and learned about the roof issues “pretty much at the same time as them.”