Happy Bucks:  John for sold out golf tournament; Doug MacDougall for good evening at Women in Rotary; Rob Dunseith being able to get his road bike out; Fred at being able to turn a nasty letter from Canada Revenue Agency into a refund; David Gibbens for a good clean up event at Fort Edmonton and an excellent movie on the Rotary hotel project; Ingrid because her incoming board of directors has been confirmed; David Turner because his son paid for mother's day brunch

 

50/50:  Jennifer and Brian did not match cards, over $300 in the pot

 

Guest Speaker:  Bill introduced Tom Clarke, a civil engineer who spent 4 decades with UNA Engineering as a transportation engineer.  Tom explored alternate ways of delivery of transportation construction to eliminate countless delays.  His talk was entitled "Completion of the Henday is in Sight".

 

In the early phases of the ring roads around Edmonton and Calgary, the progress was slow.  The planning was done in the 1960's, land was purchased in the 60's and 70's; in the 70's and 80's two sections of the Henday were commissioned for construction (on the west between Yellowhead Highway and Whitemud Drive and on the east a short piece around Highway 16).  At the present time, the portion still under construction runs from Manning Freeway to Baseline Road.  The southwest leg started in 2000 ended up with completion 2 years late and well over budget with cost escalations.  Enter the "made in Alberta P3 Process".  A Public Private Partner Process provides value for money and the risk is allocated to the party best able to manage it.  The Private Partner provides financing, ownership for 30 years (like a 30 year mortgage for the province), the provision of optimal design, construction methodology, implementation and scheduling.  Maintenance is providing for 30 years and certain rehabilitation processes are performed on the asset before ownership is transfered to the province.  There are monthly payments during the 30 year period but they are suspended if the maintenance/rehab jobs are not performed.  The province can reduce the amount of the monthly payment by providing a capital payment at the start of the project.

 

The process starts with a request for qualifications which narrows the potential bidding construction firms down to 3.  The 3 submit proposals which are submitted on a pass/fail basis.  The bidders is out if a fail happens during the qualification process.  A compliant technical proposal with the lowest price is accepted.  With the Henday, currently most of it is open to traffic with the remaining leg due in 2016.  This last portion was a major contract with major upgrades to existing infrastructure, and two river crossings.  Regulatory challenges had to be solved including dealing with Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans.  Plus there are a lot of utility lines and pipelines to be dealt with as the object was to reduce costly relocations.  This is the most difficult part of the project.  The north/south highway between Edmonton and Sherwood Park has to be reconstructed with a wider median.

 

Alberta has undergone 5 P3 Projects (2 on Stony Trail in Calgary and 3 on the Henday in Edmonton).  With respect to the Edmonton P3's the estimate to construct under the old system was $4.34 billion; the P3 contract values were $3.72 billion showing $620 million in value of money to the province with the first 2 completed on time - planned to be a lot faster than under the old system.

 

Tom was thanked by Fred.