- HWY 103 Twinning Contract Not Issued By Traditional Low Bid
By Andrew Macdonald
When the NS Government awarded a contract to twin the 103 HWY from Hubbards to Chester’s Exit 7, it awarded the contract on the basis of a request for proposal.
The more traditional method is to award the contract by low bid.
It is hard to say if the Houston government got the best value by opting for a request for proposal for the ambitious twinning program, as opposed to a straight low bid process.
“Requests for proposal and tenders are basically different terms for the same process. Both lead to a contract. An RFP invites the supplier to propose a solution that meets the criteria of the project,” says Highways department spokesperson, Toby Koffman.
As The Macdonald Notebook recently reported, Carl Potter lost the right to build the twinned 103 HWY.
It’s great to see the second term of the Tim Houston government begin active twinning of two-lane death trap highways.
While the former Liberal government of Stephen McNeil undertook massive twinning projects, that was not a focus of the Houston government during its first-term.
But, now Houston’s government plans to twin from Hubbards to the Village of Chester, a 10.5 km project. The twinning to Hubbards was carried out by McNeil’s able Highways minister, the late great Lloyd Hines.
A road builder is now on the job on the 103 Highway, and the planned completion is 2030.
While the highway twinning eventually will lead to Chester’s Exit 7, in a surprise loss, the twinning won’t be done by Carl Potter’s behemoth Dexter Construction.
Potter resides in Chester, on a massive estate perched on a hill overlooking the village.
The bidding for the work was ultra-tight. Only two road builders are identified to respond to a request for proposals: Dexter Construction & Brycon.
If you can imagine, Dexter, the largest road builder in Atlantic Canada, lost the bid to Brycon by only $294,833.
Brycon, as the low bidder, was awarded the work in July and is now on the job. Its bid was $65.7M.
There are 11 projects related to the tender award, including road beds and six bridges. It is possible that Brycon might subcontract some of the work to other road builders.
“There is one sub-grade and bridges contract from Exit 6, Hubbards, to 4 km west of Exit 7 East River that includes 11 projects. The contract is for 10.5 km of new twinned lanes. The remaining 6.5 km west of Exit 8, Chester will be tendered in the coming years,” says Highways spokesperson Gary Andrea.
In 2021, then Liberal Premier Iain Rankin promised to twin ‘all the way to Bridgewater’. The Houstonites called that the “politics of pavement.”
I asked the Highways department if twinning to Bridgewater is now on the government’s radar.
“The section of Hwy. 103 up to Bridgewater has been identified as a candidate for twinning based on capacity and safety considerations. Before any future work proceeds, planning and design phases will need to be completed,” said the department spokesperson.
Brycon Construction Ltd was founded by father and son in January 2002. Today, the son Bryan Naugle runs the company. When it was founded nearly 24 years ago, Halifax-Bedford apartment developer Victor Kielbratowski said he provided seed funding for the company.
