Mr. Guy, could you repeat for the record? You got cut off there.

Thank you, Mr. Guy. Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We’ll commit to getting a plain-language explanation of this one for the Member and committee as well.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Dolynny.

No other questions on this page.

Page 7-8, Public Works and Services, information item, infrastructure investment summary.

Page 7-9, Public Works and Services, information item, revenue summary.

Page 7-10, Public Works and Services, information item, active positions.

Page 7-13, Public Works and Services, activity summary, directorate, operations expenditure summary, $8.988 million. Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Once again under this heading, I’ll go back to my initial questioning in terms of contract and procurement where I made mention of it in the general comments. Specifically, when this department does any contracting procurement, and awards contracts through the RFP process, and does look at awarding contracts to whomever it may be that get the winning contract, whether they’re a northern contractor or a southern contractor, how often does this department conduct change orders?

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The department administers contracts on a huge scale from small standing offer agreements, sole-sourced contracts for small amounts of money like $25,000, $30,000; $5,000 and up. We also do major builds such as the East Three School and the new office building in Yellowknife. We have change orders on a regular basis on any number of these types of things, these types of contracts.

In particular I can talk a little bit about the teardown for the school in Inuvik. We have a contract which is well within budget. There are going to be some change orders on that building. We had an assessment on that building that identified all the contaminants in the building, all the things that needed to be taken into consideration when doing the demolition of that building. We awarded that assessment contract to a local vendor here in the Northwest Territories who did that work. Based on that work, we went out for a request for proposal and got a number of bids. We awarded the contract to the lowest bidder who met all the conditions of the request for proposal and moved forward. Then once demolition began, it became obvious that there were a number of items that were not identified in our original assessment by our first contractor. As a result, we are going to experience

some change orders on that. We believe that all the change orders that are going to come on that, based on the formulas provided by the proponent on removal of certain items, we’re going to be well within the budget that was allocated for that project.

In the initial assessment, is it common that when the department does get initial assessments on big projects that… On big projects, how often are those assessments not up to standard or up to par in terms of looking at providing the right contracting services to get the project done?

I’ll go to the deputy for some specifics on that, but by way of example, on this particular contract we knew we were doing a teardown on a building and we knew we needed to know what the risks were in that building by way of contaminants such as asbestos and whatnot. The contractor we hired to do the assessment so that we would have the information that we needed to go out for proposal for tender on that project, missed a number of items which, unfortunately, resulted in a couple of the change orders. This isn’t something that happens to us on a regular basis. We usually get pretty solid information that helps us build our requests or tenders. In this case, some specifics were missing, but for the exact detail I’ll go to the deputy minister.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Guy.

Thank you, Mr. Guy. Mr. Moses.

Just one last final question here. Is there any type of clauses that are put into the initial contract for big projects like this when we get an initial contractor doing the assessments? Are there any clauses that would put any change order costs or additional costs on the contractor to ensure that they do a completely thorough assessment of the project that needs to be completed? Is there any type of clause in the contract and, if not, would the Minister be willing to get one completed? Or adding one?

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have a clarification question. There are two things happening here. There was the ESA which was done originally, which was intended to identify the items in the building so that we could actually get a proper price and that people who were bidding on contracts for the teardown could be informed. Is the Member talking about that contract or is he talking about the contract that was awarded based on the information which… The first one, okay. To Mr. Guy, please.