By Andrew Macdonald
Road Building Invasion: New Brunswick Entity Muscles In On Backyard Of Carl Potter & Donald Chisholm – Nabbing Paving Work With Ultra Sharp Bidding Pencil
As I recently noted in an exclusive news article in The Notebook, a lack of New Brunswick road work this year resulted in some pretty aggressive bidding on Nova Scotia road-building tenders by Northern Construction out of Grand Falls. The multi-generational family firm, now headed by Daniel Belanger, was founded in 1947.
Northern Construction submitted the low bid on paving the 103 HWY twinning project from Tantallon to Ingramport, and now that is bidding papers have been approved by Highways department civil engineers, the paving will begin in the next two to three weeks, with the route opening to motorists in the fall.
The 11-kilometre stretch, with paving on four lanes in both directions, means blacktop will actually be spread over 22 kilometres.
The bidding was ultra-tight. Northern Construction is only leaving $236,335 on the table, the difference between its low bid and the second lowest by Dexter Construction.
The final bids, when opened by Nova Scotia Public Tenders a few weeks ago saw Northern Construction present a sharp bid of $15,145,666, while Dexter’s bid came in at $15,382,001. The bids are even lower than province’s own estimates for the work. The Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal department estimated the paving would cost $20 million.
Dexter is owned by Chester titan Carl Potter and 103 HWY is in his backyard. His firm did build the roadbed on the highway.
But, it is not just Potter who is seeing backyard work go to this New Brunswick entity. Nova Construction from Antigonish County lost a paving tender by a tight margin of $391,166.
Nova Construction is headed by third-generation road builder Donald Chisholm, and Antigonish is his backyard but his firm came second when bids were opened for a paving contract known as 2020-002 on Route 316, a 5.2-kilometre paving project on the Antigonish-Guysborough Road.
Donald Chisholm is a third-generation road builder and a noted Maritime race driver. He did not bid on the 103 HWY paving job, a surprise development.
There were four bids on the work and Northern Construction is now on that job, having submitted the lowest quote of $1,727,666, while Nova was the second lowest with a bid of $2,118,832.50.
S. W. Weeks Contracting Inc. had the highest bid at $2.2 million, and Dexter had the third highest bid at $2,188,001.
The word in Nova Scotia’s road-building scene is that a lack of New Brunswick work has led to Northern Construction, one of that province’s biggest construction outfits, to begin bidding aggressively on Nova Scotia road-building work.
Northern Construction in recent years opened two controversial rock quarries, including on the 103 HWY at St. Margaret’s Bay, on lands close to the former Bowater tract, and it also was approved for a quarry in Enfield.
