Yorkton Council heard the second of a series of presentations at its regular meeting of Council Monday from Associated Engineering (AE) on its current Asset Management Project.
"Over the past few years, the City of Yorkton (COY) has taken a proactive approach to the management of its infrastructure. As with most Canadian municipalities, a portion of their infrastructure is beginning to reach the end of its useful life. This could lead to competing spending priorities, risk to the City's infrastructure networks, and potentially a risk to public safety," detailed a letter from AE to Council.
"In order to deal with this complex problem, the City has completed a number of infrastructure studies to identify what they own, where it is located, what condition it is in, what it is worth, and how much it will cost to maintain or replace. This work has already been completed on the City's sidewalks, sewer and water, and will be completed for roadways in 2011. As part of the next step in the management of the City's infrastructure, the City has commissioned a project for the assessment of the City's buildings and environmental facilities.
"This project report and asset database aims to provide a comprehensive inventory, valuation and condition assessment of the City of Yorkton's 40 facilities included in this project."
"The proposal clearly outlined a comprehensive inspection program that allowed for each facility to be inspected by a team of engineering professionals in the disciplines of building architectural, mechanical, structural and electrical. This team was further augmented by a professional architect for inspection of items not classified as fitting into the stated disciplines."
The study took about eight months, and cost $300,000, but that is only 0.2 per cent of the replacement costs of the facilities reviewed, said David Watt, Manager Asset Program with AE.
Watt told Council there were challenges to doing the study.
"The older the facility the less information that was available," he said.
Watt said in terms of condition, there are a number of factors that come into play including public expectation when looking at City-owned facilities. For example there is an expectation of safe water from the tap 24/7.
"There's very low tolerance for failure there," he said, adding if a recreation facility has to close for a day "people can generally tolerate that."
When it comes to issues within buildings, Watt said a rule of thumb is that "20 per cent of infrastructure causes 80 per cent of the problems." He added the next phase of the process will provide a more detailed look at that 20 per cent.
Overall AE inspected some 18 facilities, incorporating 80 separate buildings, with a value of some $120,000 million, which Watt said was a rough estimate of replacement costs.
In general Watt said when looking just at the age of facilities, and that is compared to the expected life expectancy, there is a backlog of $31,500,000.
"They're being operated beyond what can reasonably expect them to last," he said, but added, like an older car with proper maintenance some vehicles last longer than expected. " Age is not always a great determinant of when you should replace something."
In terms of priority, Watt said dealing with deficiencies in regards to Occupational Health and Safety violations. He said they found 129 such incidents which will require approximately $2 million to address.
In addition is it expected another $2 million will be needed to address areas in poor condition with a high consequence of failure.
Watt said two more presentations will be made to Council as the process finalizes in the coming months.
