Weyburn City Council last night approved the awarding of the construction contract for a new storage facility for the City's fleet vehicles. The award goes to Dura Construction of Regina.

City Leisure Services Director Andrew Crowe said the need for a new facility was established in 2013, and was included in long term plans for which the time has come.

"The building we are currently making use of is the old Roundhouse building, a former CP Rail locomotive shop, 100 plus years old, and it's in tough shape, so it currently has 16,000 square feet, but the building is failing and becoming a liability issue."

In addition to major leaks beyond repair, they have sections of the building blocked off, which are unsafe to use.

"We actually looked at four different building types, including wood pole, conventional steel ,and pre-engineered steel, and we looked at eight different floor plans before we came up with our final design," Crowe noted.

They established the need for square footage by taking the measurements of each piece of equipment in their fleet as well as four pieces they could see purchasing in the near future.

The new 33,600 square-foot facility will be home to 44 fleet vehicles, but can expand to house up to 60 vehicles. The design includes efficient ways for the City Crews to access their vehicles at any time, with numerous bay doors, flex space, and a wash bay for maintenance of the fleet vehicles.

The location of the new facility will be located east and just south of the current Weyburn Fire Services facility.

Councillor Jeff Chessall asked Crowe during the Council meeting what will happen with the existing Roundhouse building, and if Weyburn crews will be assisting with its demolition. Crowe said the building is needed for another year throughout the construction of the new facility, and they'll need thorough inspections to determine if they can salvage any of the old Roundhouse.

"There is some quality structure and components of that building, so we would save as much as we could, but we have to establish what we're dealing with before we can determine if we can do anything else or not," Crowe noted.

Crowe said SaskEnergy will begin capping off the existing gasline on July 6th. The City to save $10,000 by supplying an operator and backhoe to remove the capped off line. In addition, the rest of the gasline install will be done free of charge due to the City using such a higher quantity of gas in the new facility.

Councillor Mel Van Betuw commended Crowe on his diligence on the project, and for patience with Council during the tendering process and all the times they sent him back to the drawing board.

Mayor Roy inquired if the City has worked with Dura Constrction in the past, and Crowe said that Dura specializes in this type of pre-engineered building design. They do a lot of work on car dealerships, and they have a good working relationship with Midguard Engineering, the design team, and he's confident they'll do a good job. Dura Construction also have made it known they'll employ local tradespeople as much as possible. Dura's bid price was the lowest, at $3,610,000.

The total projected project budget is $4,747,425.

Below are screen captures from Andrew Crowe's presentation during Council on June 22, 2020: