Ottawa Construction News staff writer
Unfavourable geotechnical conditions have added $10 million to the construction budget of the new Ottawa Police Service (OPS) south facility in Barrhaven, according to a recent report submitted to the Ottawa Police Service Board’s finance and audit committee.
The $187.8-million project, currently under construction at 3505 Prince of Wales Dr., encountered significant challenges during the foundational phase when piling work revealed “soft soil” that had not been fully captured during initial pre-construction testing.
“While pre-construction geotechnical testing was conducted in line with leading practices, the full extent of below-surface conditions became apparent only during piling work,” the OPS stated in a project update.
The $10 million in additional costs has been drawn from the project’s contingency fund, which was recently adjusted to approximately $14 million to account for the sub-surface complications and their indirect impacts on the construction schedule. Despite the spike, officials maintain the project remains within its overall revised budget.
The 218,000-sq. ft. structure is being built by Broccolini Construction. As of March 2026, the project is approximately 73 per cent complete.
Work on the site has transitioned from the challenging sub-structure phase to interior fit-ups. The building envelope, including roofing and exterior enclosure, is now complete. Structural steel and concrete works reached a milestone “topping-off” in May 2025, which also marked the point where the service officially pushed the facility’s opening date to May 2027—a year later than originally projected.
“Construction has moved to the interior, where we are seeing rapid progress on interior partitions and the start of finishing,” the committee report noted. “Tenant Fit-Up activities are progressing well leading into procurement packages for furniture and equipment.”
The Barrhaven station has seen its budget nearly double since its initial approval in 2021. Originally pegged at $118.2 million, the price tag rose to $178 million in 2023 following a pause during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent inflationary pressures in the construction sector.
The most recent increase to $187.8 million reflects the added complexity of the soil remediation and the inclusion of Phase B.2, which added a second floor to the south portion of the facility to accommodate evolving operational needs.
“The implications of having paused it contributed to millions and millions of dollars in cost escalation,” board member Marty Carr said during a previous update on the project’s restart. “The impact of those delays were significant.”
Once completed, the new building will replace the aging Greenbank and Leitrim stations, which Police Chief Eric Stubbs has described as being “significantly past their life expectancy.”
The new south facility is designed to be a centralized hub for the OPS, housing:
- Frontline operations and the traffic unit
- A new 9-1-1 communications centre
- Marine, dive, and tactical units
- A collision reporting centre and records management unit
Chief Stubbs reassured the committee that the foundational issues have been fully resolved. “Obviously, they’re not going to build… unless there’s the solid base that’s up to code, up to standard,” Stubbs said. “They did find issues and resolved it and we have a healthy building.”
Construction progress photos are from a video taken by Ottawa Police this winter.
