UPDATE: On Monday, May 11, 2020, a vote passed at Edmonton city council to make money available to build a new roof for the northwest Edmonton Police Service Campus.
The roof of the yet-to-open northwest Edmonton Police Service Campus will need to be replaced, more than a year after the city revealed leaks were discovered in the structure.
City administration is asking city council to approve additional funding for a complete replacement of the roof, according to a report heading to council on Monday.
Work on the 183,000-square-foot facility started in the summer of 2016 and the majority of construction was complete by the end of 2018. However, in July 2019, the city revealed water leaks from the building roof and mechanical systems were identified through the course of winter 2018-2019.
At the time, officials said the roof was leaking in more than 10 places and that EPS staff would not be able to move into the building because the ceiling was dropping and there were water spots on the ceiling tiles.
Last October, a city report stated an additional $4.6 million was needed from the City of Edmonton to repair the northwest police campus.
City councillors approved the additional funding and were told the plan was to have repairs done by the end of the year. The repairs would then be tested through the spring’s freeze-thaw cycles to confirm if they were effective.
The city report released Thursday states the repairs made in September 2019 to January 2020 have been successful in preventing further leaking in the areas that were fixed. However, since January, the report says the building “experienced a significant amount of water infiltration in areas that were not previously remediated.”
“In March 2020, further testing was done in areas of the building roof that were actively leaking. Based on the findings of this testing, the entire roof needs to be replaced,” the report states.
Mayor Don Iveson was asked about the situation during a media availability Thursday afternoon, but said he hadn’t yet read the report.
“I can’t speak to something I haven’t read yet. I know we are going to try to recover some of those costs but I can’t get into the details necessarily at this time of how we’re going to do that,” the mayor said.
“We’ll have more to say next week when we’ve seen the report.”
The initial cost of the project was pegged at $107 million. After the additional funding was approved in October, the project is approved with $111.65 million. The city report said there is $1.5 million left within the current profile, “which is not sufficient to cover the replacement of the roof.”
“Administration will seek to recover all remediation and delay costs through litigation,” the report reads.
The report said administration is working with the EPS on how a possible staged move-in process can happen to expedite moving EPS into the facility.
The campus was originally scheduled to open in March 2019. It is built to house approximately 250 staff members and provide training space for all EPS staff and up to 70 detainee cells.
The report goes to council on Monday.
Comments