Province issues default notice to Grande Prairie hospital contractor

The Government of Alberta has issued a notice of default to Graham Construction and Engineering for what it says are delays in the construction of the new Grande Prairie Regional Hospital.

The company has 15 days to come up with a newplan to get the project back on schedule; if it doesn't, the government is threatening to cancel the lucrative contract.

Infrastructure Minister Sandra Jansensaid the people of Grande Prairie have waited long enough fora new modern hospital.

"This is avery serious step and not something we are doing lightly,"Jansen said."The bottom line is simply that the hospital is not progressing as it should."

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Jansen said that earlier this month, Graham Construction requested an additional $120 million to finish the hospital.

"It's a lot of money," Jansen told a news conference Monday afternoon. "We don't have confidence that $120 million is something that makes sense to pay out.

"We don't know what the problem is, we can't justify that extra money."

When the hospital was originally approved by the previous Progressive Conservative government in 2011, it had a budget of $319 million andcompletion date of March 2015.

Over the years, the project dragged on, ballooningin cost to $763 million.

"I'm not surprised," said WayneDrysdale, theUCPMLA for Grande Prairie-Wapiti and a former infrastructure minister in the PC government who also dealt with delays of the project.

"I'm just glad the government is moving forward and getting it done."

Drysdale said that from the outside, the hospitallooks completedbut there is a lot of work still needs to be done.

Jansen said they had hoped hospital construction would be wrapped up by the end of 2018, with patients moving in sometime in 2019. Now, she said, it is not clear when the new hospital will be fully operational.