City council has awarded a contract for a design-build energy retrofit of the Powell River Recreation Complex swimming pool.
The contract, worth more than $618,000, was awarded to Coral Engineering Ltd., a company based out of Calgary with offices in Surrey and Campbell River and specializing in heating and air-conditioning. The funding for this project was approved under the 2013 capital budget.
City councillors voted unanimously to accept the company’s bid at the special council meeting held Thursday, July 18.
The city sent out a Request for Proposals at the end of June to identify energy efficiency opportunities at the aquatic centre. According to a report by Frank D’Angio, acting director of infrastructure at city hall, the project would “improve a number of inefficiencies with the current HVAC and heating system,” and “reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the aquatic centre.”
The city received four proposals, of which two were rejected because the packages were incomplete. A third proposal was rejected because the proposed job estimate was based on “an educated guess,” according to the report.
The contract includes $343,970 to be spent on the aquatic centre’s dehumidification reclaim system, $216,175 on an exhaust air reclaim and $58,261 on a dehumidification reclaim on the hot water heating system.
Coral Engineering also included a number of other recommended retrofits for the centre in its proposal that were above and beyond the initial tendered price. City staff will investigate funding options for the optional upgrades and make a report to council. The additional upgrades would bring the price of the bid up to $792,211 and include using heat from the pump room’s air-conditioning unit to heat the swirl pool, using solar ambient heating for the domestic hot water system, upgrading the remaining digital heating controls to an automated logic system, installing a door on the women’s washroom entrance from the pool and installing an energy measurement information system.
