Transportation

HWY 104: Ken Thomas & Paul White Went Up Against Global Behemoth Road Builders & Won The Day For Carl Potter & Donald Nova Chisholm

Officials with the winning 104 Trans Canada Highway 40-kilometre $300 million twinning project, Dexter Construction & Nova Construction were not taking Notebook calls on the lucrative contract awarded them yesterday by NS Highways minister Lloyd Hines.

The silence from the Carl Potter & Donald Chisholm winning consortium is due to a blanket ‘no media talk policy’  rolled out a year ago by minister Hines – mandating 104 HWY bidders to refrain from talking to the media on the P-3 twinning work.

Dexter Construction & Nova Construction, once fierce road building competitors have won a joint bid to do the $300 million twinning of  nearly 40 kilometres of a well known deathtrap, the 104 Trans Canada HWY, from the outskirts of New Glasgow to Antigonish.

Dexter is the largest road building performer when it comes to Nova Scotia highway government tenders – and Nova Chisholm is second largest.

Dexter typically bills the NS Transportation more than $130 million annually.

Brian Herman started his Casino Taxi career back in 2001. His task then was to drag the radio-squawking dispatch set-up of the cab company into the computer age and digitize its call system.

“That’s how I got into (the business),” says the 41-year old president and operations manger at Casino.

Times have certainly changed in Halifax’s taxi industry and at Casino since Brian’s grandfather bought the cab concern in 1958.

The Nova Scotia government issued this news release moments ago, 2:30 p.m..

A consortium with a strong Nova Scotia presence has been selected to design, build, finance, operate and maintain a section of the Highway 104 which will be twinned between Sutherlands River, Pictou Co. and Antigonish.

Dexter Nova Alliance was one of three proponents shortlisted to bid on the project. The company submitted the highest scoring proposal, based on technical approach, financing and overall cost. As the preferred proponent, the province will negotiate terms of a final agreement, including costs, before the end of March.

It’s a given the Halifax Southend Container Terminal is going to try to nab Mediterranean Shipping Company, (MSC) which currently calls at a competing port in Saint John, NB, as well as the Port of Montreal.

It is high likely that Kim Holtermand, CEO and managing director of PSA Halifax, formerly known as Halterm would be very keen to add the MSC shipping line to his existing customer base.

Significantly, a couple of months ago a MSC ship called at PSA Halifax, because that ship had been overloaded in Liverpool, UK, and was diverted to the Port of Halifax to discharge container boxes and lighten up its cargo because it could not sail into Montreal because of the draft at that port.

Word has reached The Notebook that Steve Snider, the long running CEO of the Halifax-Dartmouth Bridge Commission has been studying conceptual designs of what could eventually become a replacement bridge to the A. Murray MacKay Bridge.

Known as the ‘new bridge’, it was actually opened to traffic in 1970, the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge opened in 1954, and is named after a former NS premier.

It’s no secret the bridge commission is studying the future of the aging MacKay structure – but now comes word that Snider will in several months time have a report, which will help assist the CEO on whether a new bridge will be necessary, or instead whether a major rehabilitation of the existing bridge is a better option.

It’s an exciting time at the Port of Halifax, and within port circles there is hope and optimism largely due to the fact a 22-year long mariner is now CEO of the port.

Not only is Captain Allan Gray on the job, but it comes as PSA International now owns the Halifax Southend container terminal, recently re-branded from Halterm to PSA Halifax.

Singapore headquartered PSA operates 50 container terminals, including inland terminals, and ocean terminals around the globe.

Gray last week told The Notebook he is now conducting a 100 day tour meeting and chatting with port users – he has been on the job now for two months.

A shipping line calling into the Port of Halifax, the French giant CMA CGM is now building nine container vessels, which will carry up to 22,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent container boxes).

That size ship will become the largest container vessel to ply the world’s oceans – significantly for the Halifax Southend Container Terminal, recently rebranded from Halterm to PSA Halifax, it could host those gigantic ships today, if they were deployed into the Port of Halifax.

Currently vessels with 10,000 TEUs now call at the Southend terminal adjacent Point Pleasant Park.