The bridge once more

In a May 21st Powerpoint Presentation there are some budget details, I have major concerns about what is presented there on page 10 of the presentation.

This is listed as a Class C estimate - this means it is for giving you a ballpark of which you will be operating within, it is not meant to be used for making firm spending commitments.

The cost estimates have very few details.

• We do not know the design of the bridge.
• I do not see where the cost of the removal of the current bridge is included
• We do not know what the road alignments will be, especially on the east side of the bridge.
• We have an item that is "GENERAL" for $3 510 822 - no idea what is included in this.
• There is an engineering cost of $5 301 272 - no listing of what that will include.
• There is a listing of $3 274 000 for "Other" in the construction of the bridge.
• There is a contingency of 30%, $13 253 181. Prudent, but without a design and harder details it says to me that there is no real sense of what it will all cost.

Mathematically the budget is very flawed, when one is making an estimate of costs you can not put down numbers that are as accurate as they are listing. There is a listed cost of $62 731 724 for the bridge - someone is trying to say they have costed this out to the last dollar. Statistically the costs can only be estimated to the nearest $10 000 000, any more accurate than that indicates a lack of understanding of statistics and margins of error and compounding of errors.

As it stands, we have no budget in place for the bridge replacement, all we have is an very early estimate of the costs. We are being asked to go ahead to with this bridge with no idea of what the bridge will be and what the budget will be for the structure.

Page 12 of the powerpoint has the timelines - they are tight beyond belief. The contract is it to be awarded mid November, but construction is to start several weeks before then on the east piling, in fact the timeline has the east side piling more or less complete before the contract is finalized.

The design is not going to be complete before June of 2010, work is going to be underway already on the new bridge. How do you finish the design that long after you sign the contract?

Meanwhile the steel for the bridge has some wildly optomistic timelines. The steel fabrication will be starting one month before it gets delivered to the fabricator, in fact the timeline calls for the fabrication to start the same day the steel is ordered. I assume this is an error on the timeline.

How can you know the timeframes for the frabrication of the steel if you do not know the design or who is available to do the work?

The timeline calls for the main deck to be built four weeks in January of 2011.

Are we keeping the old bridge? I see nothing in the budget or timeline for the removal of the current bridge.

Apparently we will have a design for the bridge in September based on when the plan calls for applications to be made under the Fisheries Act. When will the public get to see the plan and comment on it?