Ottawa Transit Developments

[lrt's friend]

Mayor JIm Watson has announced that RTG has achieved substantial completion of the Confederation Line. Next step is a 12 day trial of regular service. This must be successfully completed before the Confederation Line can be turned over to the city. Once the line is turned over to the city, it will take about 4 weeks to begin revenue service. Stay tuned. An announcement concerned the official opening may be made in about 3 weeks.

 

[drum118]

LRT testing can begin: City rules Confederation Line 'substantially complete'

 

[OCCheetos]

A weird day in Ottawa for transit news.

City admits it let SNC-Lavalin through Stage 2 LRT bidding despite lower technical score

City manager Steve Kanellakos sent a detailed memo about the scoring to council. The memo was in response to questions filed last March.

ottawacitizen.com

The city published redacted versions of the RFP and project agreements for Stage 2 as well as sent out a memo explaining how TransitNEXT was awarded the contract despite not meeting the technical score threshold.
TL;DR: TransitNEXT met the technical requirements but fell short of the technical score threshold by less than 3% and citing "legal concerns" the committee responsible for evaluating the submissions decided to allow it continue to the financial evaluations where it blew the other two submissions out of the water apparently by a cool $500m and therefore got the highest score overall.

The CBC also published an article by Joanne Chianello that contained several glaring omissions compared to the article on the Citizen and also made a big deal of some "unnamed 'Sponsor'". The "Sponsor" was just legalese for "The City of Ottawa" as noted in the first sentence of the RFP that the city published:

Now not only does the majority of the city think that the Confederation Line is going to derail at the first snowflake of the year, but they think that there's some mysterious "sponsor" figure who is calling the shots on LRT contracts..

 

[nfitz]

Stunning to hear that they were allowed to continue in the process after failing on technical.

To me that suggests either gross incompetence or corruption.

Is there a history of incompetence at the city, or corruption with this vendor?

 

[Megaton327]

Is there a history of incompetence at the city, or corruption with this vendor?

A history of corruption with SNC Lavalin? Hmm, nothing rings a bell...

 

[kEiThZ]

Stunning to hear that they were allowed to continue in the process after failing on technical.

To me that suggests either gross incompetence or corruption.

Is there a history of incompetence at the city, or corruption with this vendor?

1) They didn't "fail" anything. They were compliant. They missed an arbitrary threshold by 3%.

2) Their bid was substantially lower.

3) The city staff didn't know whose bid it was. They just didn't want to disqualify for 3%.

As a taxpayer, I'm fine with that. I don't want to pay more just for meeting some arbitrary threshold by 3%.

 

[nfitz]

1) They didn't "fail" anything. They were compliant. They missed an arbitrary threshold by 3%.

As an engineer who has worked on bidding from both ends, I'm stunned. This isn't normal.

3) The city staff didn't know whose bid it was. They just didn't want to disqualify for 3%.

I've never seen bids where you don't know whose bid it is (and even it if was somehow masked, it's not like it wouldn't be very obvious from what is offered, if you know the market). Doing the pricing separately is common enough.

As a taxpayer, I'm fine with that. I don't want to pay more just for meeting some arbitrary threshold by 3%.

You get what you pay for ... time and time again we've seen that the low bidder manages to force and implement change order after change order to create healthy profit.

 

[OCCheetos]

As an engineer who has worked on bidding from both ends, I'm stunned. This isn't normal.

How many bids do you normally deal with? In this case there were only 3 and with one submission missing the threshold by less than 3% it would make sense to include it to get a broader selection once it came to prices. According to the city, the main reason they included it was to avoid legal troubles, for whatever reason.

I've never seen bids where you don't know whose bid it is (and even it if was somehow masked, it's not like it wouldn't be very obvious from what is offered, if you know the market). Doing the pricing separately is common enough.

According to the city, this process was anonymized. If that process was breached, the city's auditor's investigation will show that.

You get what you pay for ... time and time again we've seen that the low bidder manages to force and implement change order after change order to create healthy profit.

SNC's bid includes very simplistic stations (like what the existing line has) and ramps in place of stairs+elevators at a number of stations. Vehicles were procured separately, so we shouldn't have any issues with those.

 

[nfitz]

According to the city, the main reason they included it was to avoid legal troubles, for whatever reason.

Sounds more like the kind of excuse you make, when you don't want to eliminate a potential vendor. And I've let that happen doing bidding ... because I'm not stupid enough to toss out the late bid from the company I know will be cheaper than everyone else ... when I, as usual, have to phone them after the deadline has passed and remind them about the deadline for some $2,000 job.

In reality though, you can't do that for something this big. And by doing so they actually open themselves up to challenges. Stuff like this has to be done by the book. And if you realise half-way through the book is broken, you rip it all up, and start again.

 

[kEiThZ]

And by doing so they actually open themselves up to challenges.

That really depends. If that minimum threshold was a bid requirement, published ahead of time, sure. If it was an internal criteria during evaluation, what exactly are the bidders going to challenge? It's very defensible for the city to argue in court that public interest was served by a revised threshold (which may have been too high), in light of the substantially lower cost.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

The city built a loophole in the process that would allow them to select the lowest bidder, and they used it. Questionable maybe, and we're getting an inferior product for cheaper, but it was allowed by the process so technically it's all on the up and up

 

[nfitz]

That really depends. If that minimum threshold was a bid requirement, published ahead of time, sure. If it was an internal criteria during evaluation, what exactly are the bidders going to challenge? It's very defensible for the city to argue in court that public interest was served by a revised threshold (which may have been too high), in light of the substantially lower cost.

Yes, if non-published internal thing then no issues.

But also no story, and whoever published this should be reported to the Media Council.

Operative word is if. Hard to say without the bid documents.

 

[OCCheetos]

Yes, if non-published internal thing then no issues.

But also no story, and whoever published this should be reported to the Media Council.

Operative word is if. Hard to say without the bid documents.

The RFP document was published by the city in a redacted form. It clearly states that the city had the right to waive score and compliance variances. (Sections 6.3 through 6.5)

Routine Disclosure and Active Dissemination Plans | City of Ottawa

ottawa.ca

That really depends. If that minimum threshold was a bid requirement, published ahead of time, sure. If it was an internal criteria during evaluation, what exactly are the bidders going to challenge? It's very defensible for the city to argue in court that public interest was served by a revised threshold (which may have been too high), in light of the substantially lower cost.

That would only hold true if the city included SNC's bid in the financial evaluations prior to viewing any financial details on the bids. They weren't supposed to go back if they realized the costs would be too high.

 

[nfitz]

The RFP document was published by the city in a redacted form. It clearly states that the city had the right to waive score and compliance variances. (Sections 6.3 through 6.5)

That's not as clear cut then.

Given SNC's long and well documented history of large scale corruption and bribes, I'd be very concerned if I was the auditor on this one. Or another bidder.

 

[OCCheetos]

According to Scott Moffatt there is "no legal risk" to the City at this point.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1158027788965818369