Smithers town council has awarded an airport consulting contract directly to a contractor and waived public tendering requirements.
On April 23, council voted unaimously to approve a staff recommendation to award the continuation of engineering consulting services to McElhanney on a cost per hour basis, to support the environmental investigation, remediation, and environmental approvals work toward a Certificate of Compliance from Ministry of Environment for airport lands.
According to a staff report from airport manager Rob Blackburn, through the summer of 2022 McElhanney was contracted to identify contaminated and potentially contaminated sites on the airport lands.
Phase one and some of phase two environmental cleanup was completed. In 2023, work was paused while the town increased the scope of the project to gain compliance for all airport lands, rather than a few individual parcels within the larger airport property.
Mayor Gladys Atrill questioned why the contract should be directly awarded.
“Because this is a continuation of a project that’s been ongoing for a couple of years,” explained Blackburn. “If we were to go and tender this project, for the engineering services, the expertise and time that’s gone into the project already would be lost.
“And we’d be starting back at ground zero again. McElhaney has already built all that database and all that information and has the expertise now on our site. So if we were to tender, we would basically go back two years and start the project over again.”
The report went on to say McElhanney was retained by the Town to assist with the preparation of a grant application through the Province of BC’s Rural Economic Diversification and Infrastructure Program (REDIP) program in October 2023.
In March 2024, the Town was awarded approximately $890,000 through the Economic Diversification Implementation stream within the REDIP program to support the environmental investigation, remediation, and environmental approvals to allow the Town to prepare locations on the airport property for future development.
Finance director Willliam Wallace explained this project is substantially provincially funded.
“One of the things about the people from the province screening, whether they would award this grant or not, that gave them great comfort was that, in fact, we were in a long-standing process with McElhanney on this, and a number of projects that they have funded previously had successful outcomes. All involve the same professional group at McElhanney.”
The grant funding will be used for both planning and permitting and remediation activities of high-priority or abandoned commercial sites identified by the Town.
Blackburn also noted the airport lands represent a significant economic development and diversification for the airport operations and regional economy given the limited available commercial land in the Smithers area.
“This project will enable the Smithers Regional Airport to implement an environmental management and remediation strategy that aligns with the planned future land uses, allowing for the progressive remediation of legacy environmental contamination and derisking the environmental approval process for organizations looking to invest and develop commercial services and light-industrial facilities at the airport,” his report stated.
READ MORE: Council should tread carefully when it comes to awarding single-source contracts