Bell, city wants answers

With telephone service now fully restored to thousands of Owen Sound homes and businesses, Bell Aliant is shifting its attention to the cause of the construction blunder that took nearly a week of work to repair and left a trail of frustrated customers.
Bell spokeswoman Norma Hughes Howard said the company will launch an investigation into why an underground duct structure was heavily damaged and thousands of cables, housed inside, were severed during extensive road work last week.
“In terms of compensation, I can tell you that when Bell’s infrastructure or facilities are damaged by third-party negligence, we generally seek compensation for any associated repair costs,” she said Thursday.
An estimate on the cost of the repair job, which had Bell crews working around the clock for days, was not available, she said.

City officials, in a news release this week, said the general contractor for the road work “damaged” underground cables Friday. Miller Contracting is the general contractor for the project, the city has confirmed.
Hughes Howard told The Sun Times that the contractor called Bell to “get a locate on the cables,” which identified “exactly where the cables were. What happened from there I couldn’t tell you.”
Attempts to reach a spokesperson for Miller Contracting were unsuccessful Thursday and earlier this week.
While city workers were not involved, Owen Sound’s operations director John Johnston said he would also like to know why the construction mishap occurred, since it is a city project involving the city’s contractor.
But, he said it is too early to focus on that kind of investigation right now.
“I think I need to let the air clear a little bit and let our contractor and Bell begin that process. I think at some point, I want to understand what happened because it is our project and I think a lot of people will be asking and some have.
“Who’s at fault and how could this ever had happened? I don’t have any of those answers and I wonder whether those answers will be worked out in the court. I don’t know that either.”
Johnston said he believes he “owes it to council” to provide information on the cause of the construction mishap, once those answers are known.
At least two city councillors say it is important for council and the public to learn exactly what happened last Friday.
“Of course, I think we should know what happened because it had a great deal of effect on our downtown merchants on a very busy weekend,” said city/county Coun. Arlene Wright.
She said city staff are “on top of it” and she expects they will provide ongoing updates to council.
Coun. Jim McManaman said while it was an “unfortunate accident,” people should know why it happened.
“Now that service is back up and all the repairs are all done, I know our operations department will be talking to the contractor and with Bell and getting to the bottom of it to figure out exactly what went on and what took place,” he said.
“I think everybody wants to know the answers. I think our operations director will bring a report back to council on what took place and even on the repair — what went well, what didn’t — so we know how this can be avoided for any future projects.”
Mayor-elect Deb Haswell said “it is not a city responsibility” to conduct an investigation into the cause of the mishap, but rather the role of Bell, the contractor and the locate company.
“This has nothing to do with the City of Owen Sound. That should be quite emphatically stated, actually,” she said.
Bell workers finished splicing the severed cables Wednesday, but continued to deal with “a few” connection problems Thursday, Hughes Howard said.
Workers will spend the next few days preparing the site for the winter, she said.
“We will be working with the city to return to the site next year to install a more permanent solution,” she said, which could involve digging a trench in the newly reconstructed street to lay a concrete-encased duct bank to house the cables.

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