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City councillors will give consideration to providing additional funding to help prevent mechanical equipment failures at Powell River Recreation Complex.
At the March 24 finance committee meeting, manager of recreation Neil Pukesh presented to councillors, indicating the purpose of his report is to increase the power surge protection budget by $25,000. He said as part of the annual capital development plan in 2020, a need was identified to install surge protection equipment at the complex to mitigate losses of sensitive electronic equipment.
“We put a budget request of $50,000 in and we hired PRISM Engineering to do an electrical analysis,” said Pukesh. “A report came back and we went to tender in January of this year. We received one bid and the bid came in at $56,000, so combined with our engineering fee of $13,000, it put us over the budget by close to $20,000.
“At this point, we’re asking council’s approval to get $25,000 more for the budget so we can move forward with this project in a timely manner to avoid further losses as occurred on the weekend due to a power surge at the complex.”
Councillor Jim Palm asked Pukesh why the city only received one bid.
Pukesh said it’s specialized work, and when the recreation complex has done electrical bids in the past, such as a recent control panel upgrade, there were only two bids. He said the city goes through BC Bid.
The bid for the power surge protection came from a source based on Vancouver Island.
“They’ve done work in our building before,” said Pukesh. “We send it out to all the local contractors and suppliers. Sometimes these things are just out of their scope or their capabilities.”
City chief financial officer Adam Langenmaier said the original $50,000 for the project came from the equipment capital reserve fund and the additional $25,000, if approved, would come from the same fund.
Pukesh said since the plan was put together there have been price increases, and after hiring the engineer, it was discovered that several layers of protection are required for the building.
“We could have gone for simple protection but we decided to go for full protection on the facility,” said Pukesh.
In his report, Pukesh stated that electrical failures as a result of sudden electrical surges are typically caused during weather-related or power system transient events which are fast, short-duration disturbances that produce distortions in the system. These failures often force the immediate shutdown or suspension of facility operations until repairs have been completed, he added.
Affected areas have been cardio equipment in the weight room, variable frequency drives connected to pool pumps and air supply fans, and direct digital control panels that monitor and operate the majority of the facility’s equipment, stated Pukesh.
The finance committee gave unanimous consent to send the matter to city council.
