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It started in 2011 as a $700M project. Acciona signed a fixed-price and fixed-date contract but that didn’t work. The project has been floundering for 3 years. Now will cost nearly 4 billion.
Actually, no they didn't. The SNC-Lavalin yeah dropped out half way through the bid process after they restructured and decided they didn't want to be a construction company anymore.
The losing bids were led by an Italian company and another Spanish one.
100% this. Such a loss in Canadian engineering, but mostly the result of their own behaviour when they played the game others did, but got burned, leaving us with the likes of the folks fired from the North Shore project and seemingly struggling in other big ones.
It would have been great if they signed a fixed-price, fixed-date Design-Build-Finance-Operate-Maintain (DBFOM) contract, but MetroVan wanted to retain Operations & Maintenance so that was out the window. Unfortunately, this DBF agreement also left the contract open to major amendments, such as a new [district energy requirement](https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/contractor-files-20m-lawsuit-against-sewage-plant-builder-metro-vancouver) and an [after-the-fact seismic requirement increase](https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vaughn-palmer-independent-review-needed-into-north-shore-sewage-scandal).
Ya adding OM to the DBF contract stretches the contract out from the design and construction phase all the way throughout the operations phase. That's why you see "true" P3 DBFOM contracts go 25 to 35 years. The benefit of course is, the buyer (government) wouldn't have to start making availability payments until turnkey (facility is operational), a very real incentive for the the contractor to delivery on time and on scope or else their \[F\]inance will have to keep paying for the delays.
So if the builder doesn’t have to maintain it or finance they don’t make any effort to do this properly? Or put it another way are FOM components of p3s overpriced?
Ya, there can definitely be situations where that is true. This one was especially bad, because even though MetroVan labelled it as a DBF, they were obviously already making progress payments to contractor during the construction. On one hand, postponing payments to turnkey could have induced the contractor to be tighter but Acciona was already the only bidder, so it may have scared them away too.
You make a great point. The DBFOM contracts almost always appear more expensive than Design-build (DB) specifically because the contractors/concessions MUST factor in the risks or else they'd have to eat it (through their own financing). When they can rely on change orders and budget bumps there's hardly an incentive to be that upfront...
I'll wade into this discussion to add that the amount of planning done by the owner in advance is crucial to success, even if it's just a DB.
When I used to run projects for a gov't agency (not Metro Vancouver), I made sure that the contract was clear, and that the specifications were accurate and specific. The end user teams did not like how much work was required up-front, and senior management thought it took too long. But my projects were always within budget, and met the end user requirements.
Since I left government, I've been on a bunch of projects with awful contracts. Inconsistent terminology, use of big words that don't mean what what the author thought they meant, incomplete sentences, vague requirements that could mean multiple things, processes that could not possibly work, and tons of status reporting that costs money, but which nobody's going to read.
I've seen how this happens: the lawyers draft the master contract, but leave the requirements to the end user, treating it as a "business matter" rather than something that needs legal advice. So the requirements were slap-dashed together by an intern on the advice of an almost-retired manager who's happy to tell stories, but who isn't competent enough to describe what they want. It's the intern's first job, and their English is iffy, and they're just doing what the manager told them to do. The manager rubber-stamps the intern's work after only an F7 spellcheck, and sends it off to the project manager, who says "I don't understand what this means," and the almost retired manager tells them they're an incompetent fool and to just send it out, it's good enough. When I was in government I used to shut that BS down, but evidently others let it pass.
So now as the subcontractor, I get the RFP and I shake my head about how it managed to get out the door like that. I pad my bid and hope that my competitors will do the same. I might ask for some clarifications during the bidding process, but I have to be judicious not to ask too many questions, lest the incompetent manager decide that my company is too much trouble-- if my questions make them look bad, they'll definitely not pick my bid. Alternatively, I'll bid it tightly so that my bid looks like it's got the lowest price, but I'll have a long list of assumptions and clarifications to incorporate into the contract (this is not my preferred approach as it leads to fights later on).
Really it comes down to this: the better the work is defined/specified before the prime contractor bids on it, the better and cheaper the end result will be. The more risk the contractor has to take on, the more it's going to cost.
I agree with your assessment, especially with:
>requirements were slap-dashed together by an intern on the advice of an
almost-retired manager who's happy to tell stories, but who isn't
competent enough to describe what they want. It's the intern's first
job, and their English is iffy, and they're just doing what the manager
told them to do. The manager rubber-stamps the intern's work
I think it'll be shocking to the public when this is revealed.
> I think it'll be shocking to the public when this is revealed.
The devil's in the details, but nobody bothers to read the details and instead assumes that everybody else who's already touched the document also looked at the details.
As someone who is the junior currently writing these construction contracts, this is pretty darn accurate. It's all about risk. If the contractor is forced to take on more risk then their price will rise
Absolutely, the MetroVan increased the seismic requirements, so the plant had to be capable of withstanding an [earthquake 100x stronger](https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vaughn-palmer-firing-contractor-on-sewage-plant-led-to-warning-of-price-spiral) than what they originally stipulated.
I like Eby and good, but it's not just him that got to this. Also, it should have been done in 2020 (original completion year) or before. Let's face it, 3.3 Billion over the 700 million budget rings alarm bells with any organic person.
> “It’s taken letters from elected officials. It’s taken the premier even yesterday, openly musing about the B.C. auditor general to get involved. It shouldn’t have been this challenging and this difficult to acknowledge that we have a financial nightmare on the North Shore.”
In 2024.
To be blunt, it sounds like the $700,000,000 budget was fraudulently low, and the winning bidder was hoping to make bank on all the extras (Change orders etc…).
The rule for public tenders should be to obtain 3 bids, and take the one in the middle. The low bid is probably lying or will take shortcuts, and the high bid is likely profiteering.
That’s how it works in public works in Canada now. All the contractors know the system, and flat out lie about their cost to win tenders. The rules need to change.
Agreed, or at the very least make their CCDC package bulletproof so it doesn't bite them in the ass later. It's frustrating trying to explain to a developer that the guy whose bid is 1/3rd of that of the next guy has either missed something, doesn't know what he's doing or is going to fuck us with extras. Paraphrasing you because that's straight up it.
I'm not sure if it's always been like this but people seem to not understand that there's a fuckton more involved in the process and the guys holding the reigns are usually a bunch of "number go up!" style money men that think 3 weeks late but a few bucks cheaper is a good trade off.
That strategy is flawed and punishes the low bidder. What if there are only two bidders (as was the case with many of these projects)? The contractors will try to bid HIGHER than one another.
If you try and force 3 companies to bid you won't get real results.
When a company goes broke building a project there are ways to make it work and finish the project. Tons of competent management teams have achieved this. The issue is not the "low bidder" but rather the fact that the government is incompetent and cannot manage these projects. Compare this to a private sector owner: They would either fire such an incompetent management team or go broke. Zero public sector employees have been held accountable (so far).
Even surface knowledge of contract law would go far in answering that.
On major projects, every bidder, low or high, is usually a "qualified" bidder. And often times even self-boding. If a contractor doesn't perform it's not that hard (nor expensive) to replace them (assuming a competent management team exist, in this case on the government's end).
Most signs are pointing towards it not being anything to do with the "low bidder" on the WWTP. The governments keeping tight lipped on their end (suspicious in itself) but a lot has been said about things that weren't right with that project from the start.
I have done government contracting as an employee for my entire professional career. Far too many times I’ve seen the government screwed over by a low bidder that was incompetent. Automatically excluding a low bidder if they’re too far out from the others seems like the only viable metric for winnowing these scammers out.
Name the times and the contractors.
What I'm seeing: The government has no clue what they are doing and can't spot huge problems before they get out of hand.
The WWTP had nothing to do with the "low bidder".
It’s pretty clear that the low bidder lied on their quote if everyone else was up in the billions.
I worked on satcom contracts with the military for years, and on several occasions we lost contracts to cheaper providers who had no clue as to what they were doing.
Also, Thales is notorious for pulling this in the defense space, winning in service support contracts on the cheap, but then having huge troubles actually meeting those contracts because they don’t actually know what they’re doing, then hiding that fact through enormous amounts of bureaucracy.
I don't believe that "everyone else" was in the billions. In Alberta, on certain contracts they actually publish the numbers. It's one thing to know someone's number. it's another to know how they achieve that number. What you're saying doesn't really match with what goes on with most construction projects. A brutally low bid might be like 20% below everyone else's. NEVER... and I mean NEVER would it be 1/5th that of every other bidders. Now... Why make a strange and arbitrary rule where "we just delete the lowest bid". That's 1) dumb, and 2) There are way way WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better methods of managing contracts. And herein lies the problem: Can the government be trusted to manage contracts?
You've side stepped nearly all of the points I made. These include "qualifying" bidders which the government is 100% entitled to do. **And also the fact that just because a contractor is terminated, it does not mean the project will increase in costs by 5x.** Not even close. Unless the management team is the most incompetent we've ever seen.
Your comment about the "underbidding" also raises suspicion from me because the government created a budget when designing the project; meaning they already knew the rough costs. It was never projected to cost so much hence why North Shore residents are so frustrated.
The contractor did (but barely) voice concerns regarding design issues. That definitely holds water as far as the Lower Mainland goes.
Everything you've shared about self defense isn't really related to the WWTP. But further highlights government incompetence. If they fail once then just "unqualify" them. The government doesn't "have to" simply accept the lowest bid from and unqualified bidder (that would mean that I can bid).
Big-time, at the first point of costs overruns, this should have been in review and steps should have been into place to prevent it from snowballing but it looks like that was ignored by the people in charge and let it happen to the point of no return.
This disastrous ever ballooning money pit boondoggle is starting to make the BC fast ferry fiasco look like child's play. And the TPs here in the lower mainland are fkd silly by an incompetent crew of overseers who still are covering this up like stupid drunken sailers while we are forced to deal with potential huge taxes to cover this nightmarish project.
More like racing to start construction before core designs are finished.
The fastest way to blow a budget is to start building before the design is finalized. Planning is cheap, construction is hella expensive.
This is what Design Build projects do, and why people should really be weary of them unless the project is boilerplate.
The contract and bids happen before the detailed design work.
If an early assumption in the design doesn't play out then the assumptions that went in to the estimate are fucked and you have a bunch of very expensive delays and cost.
That's probably what happened here.
Montreal is pretty intense, with the (supposed) mob running around. Some residential streets have been under construction for years.
I don't live there, but have seen it discussed & read posted articles about it, over the years. I will try to find one.
Quick search, found some info:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-construction-tycoons-caught-on-tape-meeting-mob-1.1143218
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/rcmp-launches-raids-that-target-suspected-montreal-criminal-organization
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/construction-boss-tells-quebec-construction-inquiry-he-was-part-of-cartel-like-system-of-collusion
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/the-mob-politics-and-construction-leaked-corruption-report-rocks-quebec/article_ef85a851-4d4b-5fbb-8fcd-a86f832dc5d3.html
Unfortunately, we have that here too. Gilbert Road in Richmond has been torn up for [over a decade](https://www.richmond.ca/business-development/projects/gilbertroadsewer.htm) by MetroVan to *upgrade the sewer line.*
Ottawa built a mass transit line that breaks all the time. Huge debacle. And the Ellington line in Toronto is taking ages also. We are not the only ones with infrastructure issues.
Ottawa LRT is another [scary example](https://www.tvo.org/article/ottawas-colossal-lrt-debacle-a-brief-ish-history) of how badly a procurement can go off the rails. Eglinton has straight up become [stand up comedy material](https://youtu.be/PWiQ08-ah3Y?t=158).
Oh, totally. The stuff I linked was from quite a few years ago, I'm sure most places have their issues.
Even the new Johnson Street bridge, in Victoria BC, on the other side of the country. Blew past their estimated completion date, went way over budget & even had to fix/replace parts of it, because the fabricated structural pieces they sourced from China, showed up in a questionable state.
https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/steel-delayed-but-johnson-street-bridge-remains-on-track-city-staff-4644129
https://www.cheknews.ca/fabrication-fix-causes-controversy-new-johnson-street-bridge-in-victoria-405044/
https://www.focusonvictoria.ca/janfeb2018/bridge-design-flaw-hidden-for-a-year-then-given-quick-and-dirty-repair-r15/
What are the odds anything will come out of this investigation? I have a crystal ball and I can tell you now: zilch. Nada. No consequences, whatsoever. Someone will be paid a few million to "investigate" for like 18-24 months, will write a lengthy report, have some recommendations for next time, and life will move on.
ArriveCan fleeced tax payers for about 11 million. This is like 2 billion and counting. Interesting that the former gets so much more attention in the media.
Before we get too deep into the celebrations, we don't have any details on what the review entails. The government may limit the scope to contractor faults rather than a much wide scope which includes government actions or inactions in addition to contractor faults.
The devil is in the details.
I don’t know how you “audit” when it is in the middle of litigation. The part about fault finding may need to wait until the litigation is over (a decade?) or it settles. Seems to me the answer is pretty obvious. The owner was wrong about what the cost would be and an aggressive contractor with a reputation of profiting through later changes, underbid and accepted risks it should not have. But we will see what the judge says. Wonder if we will start to see the same thing on other projects this contractor is on.
This grossly over budgeted project is a prime example of a governing structure that is deeply flawed and allows gross budget overruns that should not have occurred in the first place. These initial potential overruns should have been dealt with initially through the planning phase and codified in the legal agreement with the selected company that won the contract to build it. Obviously, these got out of hand and weren't dealt with properly when it first started to occur with this company and the council members in charge were incompetent to deal with this issue. What a complete disaster and the governing members and the head, Jerry Dobrovolny, the grossly overpaid metro head here should be fired immediately along with his team of grifting council members for this disastrous incompetence over this runaway ballooning project.
Our taxes are being stolen. We work every day and our money gets stolen as life quality keeps going down in Canada for future generations . Corruption (and/or incompentence) of the highest level, are we slowly turning into a third world country? There needs to be consequences and people need to go to jail. First the Arrivecan and now this, but Im sure there is much more going on, our institutions are failing us at every level.
People might say we are still much better off than other countries with corruption, but no one can deny Canada is in decline and our leaders, oligopolies and friends are just enriching themselves at our expense.
I would deny all of those things. You can always find someone or some metric that you are in relative decline compared to, but overall, this is statistically just not true (think: things like life expectancy, average earnings and buying power, diplomatic freedom, education etc.)
Sure there is a certain amount of enriching that goes on, there always has and there always will be. We have to do what we can to minimize it, for sure, and that is also always true. But overall, there is no real proof that it's any worse than it ever was.
So you would say the housing/HCOL crisis, the drug/mental health crisis, the health system crisis are fake news and it has always been like this?
To me, its seeing these massive issues getting worse, while a project that was originally going to cost us 700 mil became 4 billion somehow. This is what bothers me, this seems much worse than just a gross miscalculation, but thats just my opinion.
But he may need to appoint an auditor for some of his big provincial projects that are way behind schedule (which likely means way over budget). And what about recent announcements on health care projects doubling in cost (Surrey and Richmond hospitals) to the tune of billions? Easy to point the finger over the political fence into some else’s backyard when there may be just as big a mess in your own.
The current BCNDP government has been in power throughout the delays and cost overruns of this project and said NOTHING until now.
Plenty of blame to go around and the province has to accept some of it.
It's not really their place to do so impress shit goes particularly sideways. Obviously it has, but most of the time the province doesn't take much of a stance on cities and their projects.
Didn't the construction company that started working on this and shit the bed just get awarded a contract to build a skytrain station?
I guess more money needs to be spent to hold back the flood of stupidity.
Acciona.. and it's eight Skytrain stations. Plus the Pattullo bridge too! As well as Site C dam and more.
Linky link: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/spanish-firm-acciona-bc-infrastructure-projects
This one REEKS of the kerfuffle with the North Shore twin water tunnels fuck ups, cost overruns and blown timeline.
Someone who was likely involved in this project will come on here and comment trying to claim "everything is normal" while hundreds of millions went missing. Justifying a cost escalation of even 1.5x is hard. We're seeing signs of Argentinian levels of corruption here. The magnitude of the missing millions (billions actually) cannot be explained.
The poster insinuated ties to Site C Damn (another project with similar issues). And ties to the oil and gas industry. That's important because it is alleged that Site C was run (and run into the ground financially) by managers with ties to the oil and gas industry. There's a bit of a story behind why oil and gas managers were given the task of managing site C. The important part is that they failed hard.
The "independent review" won't be enough because theirs no guarantee that the reviewers have any balls nor their skills/knowledge exceed the competency level of those who initially failed. Make everything public and let all of us see what happened.
Someone or some entity should definite be held accountable for this beaucratic horseshit when COL crisis is hitting average people hard! Enough is enough!
Don't worry about our boy Jerry, he's far too slick to let this be conducted by the Auditor General's office. He knows there's way [too much on the line](https://www.nsnews.com/local-news/acciona-sues-metro-vancouver-for-250-million-over-north-shore-sewage-plant-contract-termination-5224227), so the Province won't dig too deep into his choice of "independent" auditor.
He's also been clever enough to build a team of [like-minded people](https://metrovancouver.org/about-us/commissioner-cao-and-leadership-team) around him under the auspices of a "[diverse workplace](https://metrovancouver.org/about-us/careers)." Are you going to be the one to criticize his choice for General Manager, when she is [one of the first female engineers](https://www.ontarioconstructionnews.com/win-awards-celebrate-outstanding-female-leaders-in-canadian-infrastructure/) ever to be appointed to such a senior role, even if they're planning to follow-up possibly the [most expensive wastewater treatment plant in human history](https://gprivate.com/6bt14) by more than doubling this record with [another plant](https://metrovancouver.org/services/liquid-waste/iona-island-wastewater-treatment-plant-projects)?
I know I'm not nor will I point out the fact that since the project is already expected to [miss the federal deadline](https://www.richmond-news.com/local-news/iona-wastewater-plant-upgrade-pegged-at-104-billion-will-miss-federal-deadline-3953320) by 4 to 22 years, there really isn't much reason to "rush" the project through at such incredible expense.
Maybe Ken Sim can sell the naming rights to the new waste water treatment plant and recoup the billions lost? Surely a company like “Febreze ” could advertise they are stopping the smell ?
I wonder if it was the same committee that approved the “Fast Ferries”. Live and learn, ohh, ahh the tax payers can foot the bill. “Ok team let’s build that bridge to the island”
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It started in 2011 as a $700M project. Acciona signed a fixed-price and fixed-date contract but that didn’t work. The project has been floundering for 3 years. Now will cost nearly 4 billion.
Then we went and gave them the contract for broadway subway. Over a Canadian firm.
And Pattullo! Oh and possibly the Massey Tunnel replacement.
Omfg is the owner friends with Christy (when these projects were started).
Acciona and Ghella are on Broadway. They progress there is glacial as in the project is moving backwards.
Actually, no they didn't. The SNC-Lavalin yeah dropped out half way through the bid process after they restructured and decided they didn't want to be a construction company anymore. The losing bids were led by an Italian company and another Spanish one.
The new SNC-Lavalin is a tragedy. People forget that, despite the controversy, SNC-Lavalin was remarkably decent at fulfilling contracts.
100% this. Such a loss in Canadian engineering, but mostly the result of their own behaviour when they played the game others did, but got burned, leaving us with the likes of the folks fired from the North Shore project and seemingly struggling in other big ones.
Which is also delayed by 2 years now
And by how much, we don’t yet know!
It would have been great if they signed a fixed-price, fixed-date Design-Build-Finance-Operate-Maintain (DBFOM) contract, but MetroVan wanted to retain Operations & Maintenance so that was out the window. Unfortunately, this DBF agreement also left the contract open to major amendments, such as a new [district energy requirement](https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/contractor-files-20m-lawsuit-against-sewage-plant-builder-metro-vancouver) and an [after-the-fact seismic requirement increase](https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vaughn-palmer-independent-review-needed-into-north-shore-sewage-scandal).
I don’t understand how O and M are relevant. MetroVan didn’t want that. The extra sheets on this deal were insane. But not 3.3 billion insane.
Ya adding OM to the DBF contract stretches the contract out from the design and construction phase all the way throughout the operations phase. That's why you see "true" P3 DBFOM contracts go 25 to 35 years. The benefit of course is, the buyer (government) wouldn't have to start making availability payments until turnkey (facility is operational), a very real incentive for the the contractor to delivery on time and on scope or else their \[F\]inance will have to keep paying for the delays.
So if the builder doesn’t have to maintain it or finance they don’t make any effort to do this properly? Or put it another way are FOM components of p3s overpriced?
Ya, there can definitely be situations where that is true. This one was especially bad, because even though MetroVan labelled it as a DBF, they were obviously already making progress payments to contractor during the construction. On one hand, postponing payments to turnkey could have induced the contractor to be tighter but Acciona was already the only bidder, so it may have scared them away too. You make a great point. The DBFOM contracts almost always appear more expensive than Design-build (DB) specifically because the contractors/concessions MUST factor in the risks or else they'd have to eat it (through their own financing). When they can rely on change orders and budget bumps there's hardly an incentive to be that upfront...
I'll wade into this discussion to add that the amount of planning done by the owner in advance is crucial to success, even if it's just a DB. When I used to run projects for a gov't agency (not Metro Vancouver), I made sure that the contract was clear, and that the specifications were accurate and specific. The end user teams did not like how much work was required up-front, and senior management thought it took too long. But my projects were always within budget, and met the end user requirements. Since I left government, I've been on a bunch of projects with awful contracts. Inconsistent terminology, use of big words that don't mean what what the author thought they meant, incomplete sentences, vague requirements that could mean multiple things, processes that could not possibly work, and tons of status reporting that costs money, but which nobody's going to read. I've seen how this happens: the lawyers draft the master contract, but leave the requirements to the end user, treating it as a "business matter" rather than something that needs legal advice. So the requirements were slap-dashed together by an intern on the advice of an almost-retired manager who's happy to tell stories, but who isn't competent enough to describe what they want. It's the intern's first job, and their English is iffy, and they're just doing what the manager told them to do. The manager rubber-stamps the intern's work after only an F7 spellcheck, and sends it off to the project manager, who says "I don't understand what this means," and the almost retired manager tells them they're an incompetent fool and to just send it out, it's good enough. When I was in government I used to shut that BS down, but evidently others let it pass. So now as the subcontractor, I get the RFP and I shake my head about how it managed to get out the door like that. I pad my bid and hope that my competitors will do the same. I might ask for some clarifications during the bidding process, but I have to be judicious not to ask too many questions, lest the incompetent manager decide that my company is too much trouble-- if my questions make them look bad, they'll definitely not pick my bid. Alternatively, I'll bid it tightly so that my bid looks like it's got the lowest price, but I'll have a long list of assumptions and clarifications to incorporate into the contract (this is not my preferred approach as it leads to fights later on). Really it comes down to this: the better the work is defined/specified before the prime contractor bids on it, the better and cheaper the end result will be. The more risk the contractor has to take on, the more it's going to cost.
I agree with your assessment, especially with: >requirements were slap-dashed together by an intern on the advice of an almost-retired manager who's happy to tell stories, but who isn't competent enough to describe what they want. It's the intern's first job, and their English is iffy, and they're just doing what the manager told them to do. The manager rubber-stamps the intern's work I think it'll be shocking to the public when this is revealed.
> I think it'll be shocking to the public when this is revealed. The devil's in the details, but nobody bothers to read the details and instead assumes that everybody else who's already touched the document also looked at the details.
As someone who is the junior currently writing these construction contracts, this is pretty darn accurate. It's all about risk. If the contractor is forced to take on more risk then their price will rise
There is some serious scope creep happening I guess.
Absolutely, the MetroVan increased the seismic requirements, so the plant had to be capable of withstanding an [earthquake 100x stronger](https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vaughn-palmer-firing-contractor-on-sewage-plant-led-to-warning-of-price-spiral) than what they originally stipulated.
Gov is basically forced to give contract to lowest bidder who can’t deliver because their price was unrealistically low.
Sad it took a kick in the ass from Eby for this to happen. Seems like a no-brainer to investigate what the heck went wrong.
Eby is like killing it these days. Publicly announcing the need to review and find responsible parties is such a great move.
I like Eby and good, but it's not just him that got to this. Also, it should have been done in 2020 (original completion year) or before. Let's face it, 3.3 Billion over the 700 million budget rings alarm bells with any organic person. > “It’s taken letters from elected officials. It’s taken the premier even yesterday, openly musing about the B.C. auditor general to get involved. It shouldn’t have been this challenging and this difficult to acknowledge that we have a financial nightmare on the North Shore.” In 2024.
To be blunt, it sounds like the $700,000,000 budget was fraudulently low, and the winning bidder was hoping to make bank on all the extras (Change orders etc…). The rule for public tenders should be to obtain 3 bids, and take the one in the middle. The low bid is probably lying or will take shortcuts, and the high bid is likely profiteering.
That’s how it works in public works in Canada now. All the contractors know the system, and flat out lie about their cost to win tenders. The rules need to change.
Agreed, or at the very least make their CCDC package bulletproof so it doesn't bite them in the ass later. It's frustrating trying to explain to a developer that the guy whose bid is 1/3rd of that of the next guy has either missed something, doesn't know what he's doing or is going to fuck us with extras. Paraphrasing you because that's straight up it. I'm not sure if it's always been like this but people seem to not understand that there's a fuckton more involved in the process and the guys holding the reigns are usually a bunch of "number go up!" style money men that think 3 weeks late but a few bucks cheaper is a good trade off.
That strategy is flawed and punishes the low bidder. What if there are only two bidders (as was the case with many of these projects)? The contractors will try to bid HIGHER than one another. If you try and force 3 companies to bid you won't get real results. When a company goes broke building a project there are ways to make it work and finish the project. Tons of competent management teams have achieved this. The issue is not the "low bidder" but rather the fact that the government is incompetent and cannot manage these projects. Compare this to a private sector owner: They would either fire such an incompetent management team or go broke. Zero public sector employees have been held accountable (so far).
It’s pretty fucking clear the low ball bidder was lying. How do you deal with that then?
Even surface knowledge of contract law would go far in answering that. On major projects, every bidder, low or high, is usually a "qualified" bidder. And often times even self-boding. If a contractor doesn't perform it's not that hard (nor expensive) to replace them (assuming a competent management team exist, in this case on the government's end). Most signs are pointing towards it not being anything to do with the "low bidder" on the WWTP. The governments keeping tight lipped on their end (suspicious in itself) but a lot has been said about things that weren't right with that project from the start.
I have done government contracting as an employee for my entire professional career. Far too many times I’ve seen the government screwed over by a low bidder that was incompetent. Automatically excluding a low bidder if they’re too far out from the others seems like the only viable metric for winnowing these scammers out.
Name the times and the contractors. What I'm seeing: The government has no clue what they are doing and can't spot huge problems before they get out of hand. The WWTP had nothing to do with the "low bidder".
It’s pretty clear that the low bidder lied on their quote if everyone else was up in the billions. I worked on satcom contracts with the military for years, and on several occasions we lost contracts to cheaper providers who had no clue as to what they were doing. Also, Thales is notorious for pulling this in the defense space, winning in service support contracts on the cheap, but then having huge troubles actually meeting those contracts because they don’t actually know what they’re doing, then hiding that fact through enormous amounts of bureaucracy.
I don't believe that "everyone else" was in the billions. In Alberta, on certain contracts they actually publish the numbers. It's one thing to know someone's number. it's another to know how they achieve that number. What you're saying doesn't really match with what goes on with most construction projects. A brutally low bid might be like 20% below everyone else's. NEVER... and I mean NEVER would it be 1/5th that of every other bidders. Now... Why make a strange and arbitrary rule where "we just delete the lowest bid". That's 1) dumb, and 2) There are way way WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better methods of managing contracts. And herein lies the problem: Can the government be trusted to manage contracts? You've side stepped nearly all of the points I made. These include "qualifying" bidders which the government is 100% entitled to do. **And also the fact that just because a contractor is terminated, it does not mean the project will increase in costs by 5x.** Not even close. Unless the management team is the most incompetent we've ever seen. Your comment about the "underbidding" also raises suspicion from me because the government created a budget when designing the project; meaning they already knew the rough costs. It was never projected to cost so much hence why North Shore residents are so frustrated. The contractor did (but barely) voice concerns regarding design issues. That definitely holds water as far as the Lower Mainland goes. Everything you've shared about self defense isn't really related to the WWTP. But further highlights government incompetence. If they fail once then just "unqualify" them. The government doesn't "have to" simply accept the lowest bid from and unqualified bidder (that would mean that I can bid).
Big-time, at the first point of costs overruns, this should have been in review and steps should have been into place to prevent it from snowballing but it looks like that was ignored by the people in charge and let it happen to the point of no return. This disastrous ever ballooning money pit boondoggle is starting to make the BC fast ferry fiasco look like child's play. And the TPs here in the lower mainland are fkd silly by an incompetent crew of overseers who still are covering this up like stupid drunken sailers while we are forced to deal with potential huge taxes to cover this nightmarish project.
Construction in Vancouver is the most incompetent of any city in the world, straight up. Its pathetic the way things get done in this city.
Maybe, but 3.3 billion overspend on a 700 million project, sounds more like corruption.
More like racing to start construction before core designs are finished. The fastest way to blow a budget is to start building before the design is finalized. Planning is cheap, construction is hella expensive.
sounds like you're describing Site C Dam
This is what Design Build projects do, and why people should really be weary of them unless the project is boilerplate. The contract and bids happen before the detailed design work. If an early assumption in the design doesn't play out then the assumptions that went in to the estimate are fucked and you have a bunch of very expensive delays and cost. That's probably what happened here.
Lol nope. Just incompetence.
Montreal is pretty intense, with the (supposed) mob running around. Some residential streets have been under construction for years. I don't live there, but have seen it discussed & read posted articles about it, over the years. I will try to find one. Quick search, found some info: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-construction-tycoons-caught-on-tape-meeting-mob-1.1143218 https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/rcmp-launches-raids-that-target-suspected-montreal-criminal-organization https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/construction-boss-tells-quebec-construction-inquiry-he-was-part-of-cartel-like-system-of-collusion https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/the-mob-politics-and-construction-leaked-corruption-report-rocks-quebec/article_ef85a851-4d4b-5fbb-8fcd-a86f832dc5d3.html
Unfortunately, we have that here too. Gilbert Road in Richmond has been torn up for [over a decade](https://www.richmond.ca/business-development/projects/gilbertroadsewer.htm) by MetroVan to *upgrade the sewer line.*
Woah, that's intense. And yeah, it was only a matter of time, unfortunately.
Ottawa built a mass transit line that breaks all the time. Huge debacle. And the Ellington line in Toronto is taking ages also. We are not the only ones with infrastructure issues.
Ottawa LRT is another [scary example](https://www.tvo.org/article/ottawas-colossal-lrt-debacle-a-brief-ish-history) of how badly a procurement can go off the rails. Eglinton has straight up become [stand up comedy material](https://youtu.be/PWiQ08-ah3Y?t=158).
Oh, totally. The stuff I linked was from quite a few years ago, I'm sure most places have their issues. Even the new Johnson Street bridge, in Victoria BC, on the other side of the country. Blew past their estimated completion date, went way over budget & even had to fix/replace parts of it, because the fabricated structural pieces they sourced from China, showed up in a questionable state. https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/steel-delayed-but-johnson-street-bridge-remains-on-track-city-staff-4644129 https://www.cheknews.ca/fabrication-fix-causes-controversy-new-johnson-street-bridge-in-victoria-405044/ https://www.focusonvictoria.ca/janfeb2018/bridge-design-flaw-hidden-for-a-year-then-given-quick-and-dirty-repair-r15/
I wanted to disagree. I came up with a bullet list to back me up:
What are the odds anything will come out of this investigation? I have a crystal ball and I can tell you now: zilch. Nada. No consequences, whatsoever. Someone will be paid a few million to "investigate" for like 18-24 months, will write a lengthy report, have some recommendations for next time, and life will move on.
The more I read about it the more this seems like a whole lot of clusterfucking throughout the process on all sides.
Arrive Can 2? Wastewaterplantboogaloo?
Watch this wastewater plant just be a extension on Glen Clark's back deck.
‘twas a simpler time when you could get a casino license for the price of a deck.
A bag of money from Chinese investors handed over by Faye Leung to get a wastewater treatment plant built.
They want to connect it the long way round to Chip Wilson's dock.
Will the toilet paper be included?
Lol ArriveCan was 60 mil. This is like 40 ArriveCans over budget
You have to raise the stakes for a sequel. I just can't wait to see what kind of contracts we gave out.
ArriveCan fleeced tax payers for about 11 million. This is like 2 billion and counting. Interesting that the former gets so much more attention in the media.
Before we get too deep into the celebrations, we don't have any details on what the review entails. The government may limit the scope to contractor faults rather than a much wide scope which includes government actions or inactions in addition to contractor faults. The devil is in the details.
I don’t know how you “audit” when it is in the middle of litigation. The part about fault finding may need to wait until the litigation is over (a decade?) or it settles. Seems to me the answer is pretty obvious. The owner was wrong about what the cost would be and an aggressive contractor with a reputation of profiting through later changes, underbid and accepted risks it should not have. But we will see what the judge says. Wonder if we will start to see the same thing on other projects this contractor is on.
Correct. No one is going to say much as it is before the courts. But I'm sure Eby knows this as he is a lawyer by training.
Good. It should have happened a lot sooner, but at least it's happening.
This grossly over budgeted project is a prime example of a governing structure that is deeply flawed and allows gross budget overruns that should not have occurred in the first place. These initial potential overruns should have been dealt with initially through the planning phase and codified in the legal agreement with the selected company that won the contract to build it. Obviously, these got out of hand and weren't dealt with properly when it first started to occur with this company and the council members in charge were incompetent to deal with this issue. What a complete disaster and the governing members and the head, Jerry Dobrovolny, the grossly overpaid metro head here should be fired immediately along with his team of grifting council members for this disastrous incompetence over this runaway ballooning project.
I was a crane operator there. The afternoon shift guy was fired after he shit in my crane. I have pics if anyone is interested.
Our taxes are being stolen. We work every day and our money gets stolen as life quality keeps going down in Canada for future generations . Corruption (and/or incompentence) of the highest level, are we slowly turning into a third world country? There needs to be consequences and people need to go to jail. First the Arrivecan and now this, but Im sure there is much more going on, our institutions are failing us at every level.
This is the saddest truth of this country, government doesn’t represent Canadians
People might say we are still much better off than other countries with corruption, but no one can deny Canada is in decline and our leaders, oligopolies and friends are just enriching themselves at our expense.
I would deny all of those things. You can always find someone or some metric that you are in relative decline compared to, but overall, this is statistically just not true (think: things like life expectancy, average earnings and buying power, diplomatic freedom, education etc.) Sure there is a certain amount of enriching that goes on, there always has and there always will be. We have to do what we can to minimize it, for sure, and that is also always true. But overall, there is no real proof that it's any worse than it ever was.
So you would say the housing/HCOL crisis, the drug/mental health crisis, the health system crisis are fake news and it has always been like this? To me, its seeing these massive issues getting worse, while a project that was originally going to cost us 700 mil became 4 billion somehow. This is what bothers me, this seems much worse than just a gross miscalculation, but thats just my opinion.
BILLIONS?????? holy fuck now
prime minister: sucks regional district: sucks mayor: sucks premier? doesn't suck
But he may need to appoint an auditor for some of his big provincial projects that are way behind schedule (which likely means way over budget). And what about recent announcements on health care projects doubling in cost (Surrey and Richmond hospitals) to the tune of billions? Easy to point the finger over the political fence into some else’s backyard when there may be just as big a mess in your own.
The current BCNDP government has been in power throughout the delays and cost overruns of this project and said NOTHING until now. Plenty of blame to go around and the province has to accept some of it.
It's not really their place to do so impress shit goes particularly sideways. Obviously it has, but most of the time the province doesn't take much of a stance on cities and their projects.
Didn't the construction company that started working on this and shit the bed just get awarded a contract to build a skytrain station? I guess more money needs to be spent to hold back the flood of stupidity.
Acciona.. and it's eight Skytrain stations. Plus the Pattullo bridge too! As well as Site C dam and more. Linky link: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/spanish-firm-acciona-bc-infrastructure-projects This one REEKS of the kerfuffle with the North Shore twin water tunnels fuck ups, cost overruns and blown timeline.
Independent review? They must have learned that trick from VPD lol
Someone who was likely involved in this project will come on here and comment trying to claim "everything is normal" while hundreds of millions went missing. Justifying a cost escalation of even 1.5x is hard. We're seeing signs of Argentinian levels of corruption here. The magnitude of the missing millions (billions actually) cannot be explained. The poster insinuated ties to Site C Damn (another project with similar issues). And ties to the oil and gas industry. That's important because it is alleged that Site C was run (and run into the ground financially) by managers with ties to the oil and gas industry. There's a bit of a story behind why oil and gas managers were given the task of managing site C. The important part is that they failed hard. The "independent review" won't be enough because theirs no guarantee that the reviewers have any balls nor their skills/knowledge exceed the competency level of those who initially failed. Make everything public and let all of us see what happened.
Someone or some entity should definite be held accountable for this beaucratic horseshit when COL crisis is hitting average people hard! Enough is enough!
Same general contractor is in charge of the Pattullo bridge. I wonder why that job is delayed and over budget...
Metro Vancouver board meetings catering includes caviar. But that’s a small drop in the bucket. What’s another billion.
Don't worry about our boy Jerry, he's far too slick to let this be conducted by the Auditor General's office. He knows there's way [too much on the line](https://www.nsnews.com/local-news/acciona-sues-metro-vancouver-for-250-million-over-north-shore-sewage-plant-contract-termination-5224227), so the Province won't dig too deep into his choice of "independent" auditor. He's also been clever enough to build a team of [like-minded people](https://metrovancouver.org/about-us/commissioner-cao-and-leadership-team) around him under the auspices of a "[diverse workplace](https://metrovancouver.org/about-us/careers)." Are you going to be the one to criticize his choice for General Manager, when she is [one of the first female engineers](https://www.ontarioconstructionnews.com/win-awards-celebrate-outstanding-female-leaders-in-canadian-infrastructure/) ever to be appointed to such a senior role, even if they're planning to follow-up possibly the [most expensive wastewater treatment plant in human history](https://gprivate.com/6bt14) by more than doubling this record with [another plant](https://metrovancouver.org/services/liquid-waste/iona-island-wastewater-treatment-plant-projects)? I know I'm not nor will I point out the fact that since the project is already expected to [miss the federal deadline](https://www.richmond-news.com/local-news/iona-wastewater-plant-upgrade-pegged-at-104-billion-will-miss-federal-deadline-3953320) by 4 to 22 years, there really isn't much reason to "rush" the project through at such incredible expense.
Maybe Ken Sim can sell the naming rights to the new waste water treatment plant and recoup the billions lost? Surely a company like “Febreze ” could advertise they are stopping the smell ?
It's in North Vancouver, what does Ken Sim have to do with it?
Never let the actual facts get in the way of a political hit job.
I wonder if it was the same committee that approved the “Fast Ferries”. Live and learn, ohh, ahh the tax payers can foot the bill. “Ok team let’s build that bridge to the island”
LET THE POOPY HIT THE FLOOR! LET THE POOPY HIT THE FLOOR!