BC Highway Reinstatement Program

The extreme rainfall events of November 14 and 15, 2021, had widespread impacts on highway infrastructure across the Southern Interior, Lower Mainland, and parts of Vancouver Island. These events led to significant closures on Highway 1, Highway 3, Highway 5 (between Merritt and Hope), Highway 8 (between Merritt and Spences Bridge), Highway 12, and Highway 99 (30 km west of Lillooet).

In response, the Province established a Highway Reinstatement Program to restore critical transportation corridors. The program focused on Highway 1 between Highway 11 and Spences Bridge, Highway 5 between Hope and Merritt, and Highway 8 between Spences Bridge and Merritt—all of which fell into the over $50 million project category and were delivered using the Alliance contracting model. To support this approach, two Requests for Qualifications (RFQs) were issued—one for Engineering and Design Firms and another for Construction Firms, which prequalified candidates based on project value thresholds ($20–50 million and over $50 million). Multiple reinstatement projects were successfully expedited and delivered through this collaborative qualification and procurement framework

CHARTER’S ROLE:

Charter served as the Owner’s Advisor and Independent Third-Party Estimator on the Highway Reinstatement Program, providing integrated advisory services to support project scoping, procurement, and delivery under aggressive timelines and evolving cost parameters.

• Integrated Independent Owner Advisor within to support project scoping

• Project Management Advisory

• Procurement Advisory for contracting strategies for aggressive schedules without pre-set budgets.

• Planning support, critical cost, schedule, constructibility, methods, risk management advisory

• Definition of payment and incentive terms

• Value Engineering

• Independent cost estimating and validation

• Schedule and Cost Negotiations

• Construction management Oversight

• Management Systems Definition & Implementation

• Project controls, earned value analysis, financial reporting