WESTLOCK — Westlock County councillors voted 6-1 on a motion during their April 23 meeting to award a $622,806 contract for navigational lighting and general electrical upgrades at the Westlock Regional Airport, which constitutes phase two of an overall improvement project that began last year.
The $622,806 contract was awarded to North Star Electrical Services, a western Canadian company specializing in “airfield electrical installations and troubleshooting,” as stated on their website.
North Star Electrical Services had submitted the lowest of six bids as part of a tender that closed on March 28. The other bids ranged in price from $674,475 to $1.09 million.
It should be noted that in April 2023, Westlock County (in conjunction with the Town of Westlock) received $1.7 million in Community Airport Program (CAP) funding via the Ministry of Transportation and Economic Corridors to carry out $2.2 million in upgrades to the airport.
This project was split into two phases, with the first phase being a fresh asphalt overlay on the runway and the second being the lighting and electrical upgrades.
Chief administrative officer Tony Kulbisky said Select Engineering Consultants Ltd. evaluated the six bids based on criteria set out in the tender documents. Their recommendation was to accept the tender from North Star.
Wording dispute
Coun. Stuart Fox-Robinson, who voted against the motion, questioned why the six bids were referred to as “unofficial” tenders within Select Engineering’s recommendation.
Kulbisky said that in the past, a tender would typically be awarded based on whoever bid the lowest amount, noting that it didn’t matter if they had a lack of project experience, or if their invoicing had issues, or if their bid even ultimately resulted in massive cost overruns.
However, Select Engineering follows a different tender process of not only choosing contractors based on cost, but also scoring tenders to determine which contractor is the most qualified to do the job.
In this case, North Star happened to not only submit the lowest bid, but also had the highest-ranked tender package based on prior experience with all aspects of airport lighting and adherence to specifications.
“If it was the low bid, but they had really poor performance in prior projects, they wouldn’t have had a higher score,” he said.
Kulbisky stressed that the engineering firm had done the same thing with the first phase of the airport improvement project and suggested that Alberta Transportation was now utilizing a similar process of applying a weighted average to evaluate their own project tenders.
Fox-Robinson maintained that he didn’t understand why the term “unofficial” was being used when their bid was their “official” estimate for the project.
Reeve Christine Wiese said that she believed the Westlock Regional Airport Advisory Board had been very mindful of pricing when planning out this improvement project, and how even a small change in where a light is placed can result in a huge cost difference.
“We’ve gone over it in a very detailed way in our board meetings where the lights will be placed,” she said.
“I think the board has done very well with aligning this right, so we get out the right bidding.”
