Officials with the company responsible for the construction of the new consolidated courthouse say they’re not sure how labour disputes will impact the project.
The consolidated courthouse project has been in the works since 2005 but constructions started near Brodie Street in 2011. The new courthouse will replace both the Arthur Street Ontario Court of Justice and the Superior Court of Justice on Camelot Street.
The province awarded an amount of $473-million to Plenary Group to design, build, finance and maintain the city’s courthouse for the next 30 years.
But the project has faced a number of roadblocks, including three strikes.
Commercial roofers headed for the picket lines earlier this year along with elevator technician and craft workers. Both the roofers and elevator technicians have since gone back to work.
Hafeez Habib, assistant vice-president of Plenary Group, said they’re still assessing if the strikes have made any impact to the project.
He said the courthouse is in its final stages and believes they will meet their target date in the fall.
“The (roofers) came back in June so I don’t think there’s going to be any material impact in terms of them,” he said.
“We didn’t get all the crews back as early as we thought we would but they are back now. We do as much as we can to mitigate the impact of the strikes and once they come back we can review if the strikes had any impact to the schedule.”
Some of the finishing touches include painting, flooring and furniture being delivered.
Another element that complicated the project was when a crane tipped over in May. No one was injured when the crane collapsed on the lower section of the Miles Street building.
Habib said they lost a few days of work but fortunately, it didn’t cause much damage and didn’t set them back.
