Quartek was retained by the Regional Municipality of Niagara to provide design, tender and construction phase services for a new Niagara Regional Police detachment and Emergency Services headquarters at Thompson and Gilmore Roads in Fort Erie. Site and civil engineering work included water supply/distribution, sanitary sewerage, site grading and drainage, stormwater management, and driveways and parking. Although the final value of the site works was approximately 25% greater than the initial contract value, an estimated $105,000 or 70% of the increase was directly related to the condition of site subgrade soils that was unable to be foreseen despite pre-construction geotechnical investigative work carried out by others. A further 20% of the additional costs was related to changes in scope requested by the Clients post-tender.

Innovation / Added Value
In order to satisfy Town of Fort Erie and Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority requirements as well as honour a prior agreement with the previous landowner, stormwater management for the site was quite challenging. However, based on our considerable experience with a variety of commercial, industrial and institutional site developments projects, Quartek was able to compose a SWM solution that satisfied the authorities and accommodated runoff from other private development lands. This solution involved an SWM dry pond as well as well as a fairly elaborate system of vegetated swales with integral check dams.