By Justine Kelsie

Province, Graham exchanging barbs over Grande Prairie Regional Hospital

Aug 2, 2018 | 3:02 PM

The province has responded after a media statement was released by Graham Construction regarding the Grande Prairie Regional Hospital project. 

In their release, the construction firm cited over 600 change orders and over 400 design clarifications were needed since the last budget update. They go on to say 63 approved design changes and 34 new scope clarifications were made in June of this year.

Infrastructure Minister Sandra Jansen says change orders are common for a project of this magnitude and in this case, they aren’t believed to be out of the ordinary. A spokesperson for the province says there is a fund for change orders within the budget.

“The volume of change orders on the Grande Prairie hospital is not out of line with any other large-scale project that we are doing. The scope is a different thing,” said Jansen.

According to the minister, the scope was fixed prior to a December 2016 amendment to the contract that both parties signed. Jansen called the move to issue a Notice of Default “unusual” as there aren’t any other projects around Alberta that they are having to deal with in this way.

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“Leading up to this, Infrastructure had requested further clarification on the increased cost projection and schedule impact. To date, we have received no information,” said the minister. 

Meanwhile, Graham Construction said in their statement, since last March, they have tried to book meetings with the senior members of the Infrastructure team but have been met with cancellations every time. 

“At the project level, we meet with Graham almost daily. At the senior project management level, we meet bi-weekly. At the Executive level, we meet monthly. Despite all of these regular meetings, we have not been able to come to an agreement and it became very apparent to us that further action was needed to be taken to resolve the issue. There has been a lot of meetings back-and-forth,” said the minister. 

Jansen has called a $120-million ask over and above the original $510-million budget “unjustifiable”. The construction firm says it is “false” that they asked for that $120-million and “repeatedly alerted Alberta Infrastructure of a forecasted $70-million to $85-million shortfall”. The total cost of the project is now $763-million.

Graham Construction has until August 22 to create a mitigation plan and provide it to the province.