Hanover council has approved the use of Ventin Group Ltd. to work on the design for the town’s new police station.
11 companies bid on the design and contract administrative services work for the planned police station which would be built on the former fire hall property at 443 10th Ave.
Hanover has a project team subgroup made up of the police chief and town planning and building staff that has been evaluating bids.
Subgroup member, Andrew Wilken, Director of Building and Planning, told council Tuesday, the Ventin Group, also known as +VG Architects was also recently involved in Hanover’s Civic Theatre upgrade and years ago, in work on the clock tower as well as on the Civic Centre before that. “They understood our community, they understood what we were after and they exemplified that through the interview process and their submittal,” said Wilken.
He added the Ventin Group has also worked on OPP detachments including those in neighbouring Wellington County.
Police Chief Chris Knoll noted during discussion in a response to a question from council, “I can say that the detachments out of Wellington County have all been completed by +VG. I have been a member of the Wellington County OPP and have toured and worked in all of those facilities in Wellington County and they do excellent work. Even with the interview, when we interviewed this architect, pretty much off the top of his head, he was able to explain exactly what we needed in a building, so I think that goes a long way. I think the other thing that’s nice with this architect is this community has previous experience with this firm.”
Knoll added, “I think they’ll do a great job for us and we’re really excited to move forward.”
Meanwhile, Wilken also noted, “They have confirmed that they do have the ability to start this work immediately and their proposal had a schedule being met of construction starting in April of 2026, which is what we proposed.”
The recommended $512,000 bid was not the lowest on of all the bids, which ranged from $292,000 to $995,000.
Wilken explained, “This is a very specialized build, and it became pretty clear through the proposals that we received there is a lot— all– legislative requirements needed for a police station build. The lower end of these tenders that came back had little to no experience with police stations, and the experience that would maybe be lacking on that consultant side, town staff didn’t have the experience to make up for it either, nor should they, but none of us have built a police station before, the chief included.”
This year’s Town budget includes about $125,000 for architectural and engineering designs for the project and the Ventin Group will cost about $2,000 over that, but savings are anticipated later in the project. The total for the design and contract administrative work is $512,000.
CAO Sherri Walden noted, “What’s very key is that when we issue these types of RFPs there’s a very clear scoring process and these submissions are then scored based on all those things listed there: project approach, proposal completeness, past performance, references and financial proposals— scored separately by three different subcommittee members who jointly come together and the two rose to the top of that rating system. So again, when the rating system is thorough, you can be assured as residents that staff are working diligently to make sure we are assessing the best applications that can do the best work for us.”
The overall total project cost for the new police station is estimated at about $8.6 million (as of July 2024).
Council voted unanimously in favour of the recommendation.
