The RM of Portage la Prairie Council's awarded the tender for the Oakville lagoon expansion.

It goes to Edie Construction, for just over $294,000, cost-shared evenly between the municipality, province, and Ottawa.

Reeve Kam Blight's pleased to see the project moving forward, calling it an expansion that's needed to facilitate recent and future development.

"The engineers (Stantec) spoke to us, and provided an estimate to us at a cost of close to $800,000 to do this project," he says, "And the majority of the tenders that came in were well below that number. And we went with the lowest tender in this one, which is Edie Construction. Naturally, we're very excited about that. It's nice to see tender amounts come under the estimate."

Blight's surprised at how low all 14 bids were, with the highest at $677,000, and acknowledges there was some concern.

"It makes you wonder why," he says, "What was missed, etc. However, Stantec, the engineers we hired to look after this project, and that provided the estimate as well, reviewed all the applications, and said every one meets the specifications required, and they signed of on recommending the lowest bidder. So we have no concerns going forward."

Work on the lagoon expansion begins this year.

The Report to Council's here.