Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

NNSL (Mar 24/99) - A long-time Yellowknife-based helicopter company owner is questioning the NWT Power Corp.'s tender on a lucrative repair job.

Bob O'Connor, president of Aero Arctic, says work to repair the Snare hydro line should have been divided up among helicopter companies.

Five helicopter companies responded to the Power Corp.'s request for proposals on repair work to the Snare hydro line (Aero Arctic, Great Slave, Nunasi, Canadian and Arctic Sunwest).

The Power Corp. awarded Great Slave the contract. It could be worth about $390,000, based on the number of hours the Power Corp. requested and rates offered by Great Slave. Rob Askin, Great Slave Helicopters operations manager, said the company bid on the proposal and was successful.

Had the Power Corp. chosen the lowest bidders for the various types of helicopters it says are required, there would have been a savings of about $8,000.

Power Corp. corporate development director Bill Braden said the corporation chose to go with one company because it was felt that co-ordinating four different companies would affect efficiency.

"When our field people scoped this job, they expected to be using a number of machines at the same time in the same area," Braden said.

The Power Corp. needs the helicopters to assist with the repairs to the Snare hydro line. The full repair is estimated at $5 million and will take 15 months.

The line's splices were apparently incorrectly installed by Edmonton-based MacGregor Construction and need to be repaired as soon as possible. The Power Corp. has tested the integrity of the splices and says it has results to show the work was not done to specifications.

The Power Corp. has filed a statement of claim in NWT court against MacGregor.

In 1989, the Power Corp. paid the Edmonton firm $22 million to build the new line. The utility approved the $5-million repair job in December and the tender earlier this year.

The list of helicopters the Power Corp. says it will need for the work is "nonsense," O'Connor said.

"It looks like a list of Great Slave's helicopters," he said.

"You don't need (eight) different types of helicopters."

In its call for proposals, the Power Corp. says Hughes 500, Bell 206, Bell 206L, Bell 204, Bell 212, and three different ASTAR models (BA, B2 and B3) are required.

The ASTAR B3 is designed for high-altitude work and the BA is capable of doing the same work as the other ASTAR models, O'Connor said.

Great Slave has all the models Power Corp. requested. It was the only bidder that did. In fact, Great Slave has 11 types of helicopters.

O'Connor, flying in the North since 1959, also takes issue with the timing of the request for proposals.

The request went out Feb. 2 with replies required three days later.

The Feb. 5 date was extended to Feb. 9 after companies expressed time concerns.

Thirty days to review the tender would have been more acceptable, O'Connor said.

On jobs under $100,000, the Power Corp. normally gives 10 days of response time to a request for proposals. For projects over $100,000, 15 days are normally given.

The Power Corp. should have gone with a "standing offer" approach, O'Connor said.

That means if company A, which has an agreement to supply a helicopter at a certain price, can't provide the machine because it is working elsewhere, then company B gets a call and will provide its machine at a set rate, and so on.

Braden said the Power Corp. does have standing offers for some work, but not helicopter contracts.

However, the utility is considering going to standing offers for helicopter work, Braden said.

Arctic Sunwest general manager Louis Trottier preferred not to comment on the matter until he received a reply to correspondence sent by Arctic Sunwest to Power Corp.

Nunasi Helicopters general manager Martin Knutson also preferred not to comment at this time because of correspondence between the company and utility. "It's a sensitive issue," he said.

Nunasi Helicopters is 51 per cent owned by Nunasi Corp. and 49 per cent owned by B.C.-based Northern Mountain Helicopters.

Rob Carroll with Canadian Helicopters opted not to comment.