P.G. Correctional Centre Undergoing Multi Million Dollar Repairs

Saturday, June 25, 2005 04:00 AM

Wrapped in scaffolding, the Prince George Regional Correctional Centre is undergoing major repairs

The scaffolding is up, the workers have stripped off most of the mess, and the Prince George Correctional Centre is undergoing a major repair job.

The Jail that has become known to locals as the "Hilton on the Hill" is suffering from leaky condo syndrome and it will take $5.3 million dollars to fix the problem.

BCBC's Ken Faris tells Opinion 250 News the building was showing signs of "seepage" around the windows and water had "wicked" into the insulation next to the roof.

Environmental consultants and engineers were brought in, and they determined the stucco face had to go and the roof would have to be replaced in order to replace the insulation.

So, the stucco has been stripped, and will be replaced with masonry block, corrugated pre-finished steel panels, and flat panel pre-finished steel and the roof will be replaced with new prefinished steel.

The Prince George Correctional Centre is just eleven years old and was built at a cost of 44.5 million dollars. Originally designed by the architectural firm of Weisman, Dewar, Grout and Carter (now known as Stantec) the actual construction on the building was handled by the Kraft Construction Company out of Winnipeg.

Faris says he has no information at this point on warranty or liability but it is clear the B.C. taxpayers will be paying for the 5.3 million dollar repairs.

While the repairs are bad news for taxpayers, Prince George contractors are getting lots of business. Vanbots Costruction, Bryant Electrical, Zettl Masonry, Hart Iron & Machinery and Safway Scaffolding, are all involved in the job which is expected to wrap up in December of this year.
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Posted on Saturday, June 25, 2005 04:00 AM in News by Elaine Macdonald

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Comments

Posted by: owl on June 25 2005 9:46 AM

In the 60's the National Research Council began issuing technical digests to the construction and design cummunities. Several dealt with a well known construction method known as "the rain screen principle".

For some reason or other, at about the time of the creation of "outsulation", which is the practice of putting foamed plastic insulation on the face of a building and covering that with "stucco", designers, building inspectors, and builders, especially in the western part of Canada, forgot about the basic physics of building construction and we end up with one fiasco like this after another. This, in a major part, is the cause of the "leaky condo" syndrome.

Now we invented these so called "experts" who basically have gone back to telling everyone in the business something they all used to know 20+ years ago.

And they say the education system has improved over time. That too is a fallacy.

Posted by: Chadermando on June 25 2005 4:07 PM

I remember at the time sitting on the call list at the local trades union hall and watching this contract go out to an out of province company that was employing out of province workers with our dollars. It was said at the time the province would save $500,000 by doing this.

Local contractors got burned by not being involved in the jail contract the first time around and said at the time that in the long run this would cost PG taxpayers more for the small savings than it was worth. Turns out cost $5 Million extra to keep the local out of this job.

This jail contract triggered a decade of bad times for PG construtcion companies as the rule of the day in the 90's was to contract to anyone but the locals.

This kind of reminds me of what is going on today with the BC Ferries outsourcing to the Europeans for construction of our new ferry fleet.