The Third-Party cost review is on the agenda of the next meeting of Executive Ctte.
Ok, a brief first take, then we'll deep dive.
This review was clearly scoped by the City with some measure of input from Mx. Its pretty soft, with lots of fuzzy language.
That said, let me roll out the details from the report, and then add some commentary.
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Let me highlight in the above that I do not consider bullet 1 to be a reasonable basis of comparison. Bullet 2, in my judgement is also unreasonable, I will simply say I don't care for the way Mx costs projects, manages contracts and assigns costs. To the extent that other projects are equally problematic in cost, they are inappropriate as benchmarks.
On the last bullet point, the 'other' is not listed........but I have made comparisons here to WT's bridge over Keating Channel, and other rail truss bridges, as well as to various basis trail building projects. Without a unit-cost detail here, its impossible to identify how out of line this project's numbers are..........but I am suspicious as to what comparisons were chosen.
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Look at the bottom one............ yes, I am drawing your attention to it....
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The report does not give us any changed global costing number..........but does suggest that public scrutiny may have encouraged some value-finding:
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Assuming this is moves forward...........this is the proposed timeline:
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In the attachments we find this:
From the above I would highlight:
2023: noise wall installation (comment, oh, those noisy cyclists, riding behind mostly industrial properties.......oh wait.........)
2024: Administrative Costs.
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I continue to support this project; but I expect the City to demand that:
- The cost of noise walls be entirely removed from the project.
- Metrolinx Contract Administration Fees be capped at 6% maximum ( I consider that excessive and to include a projected profit)
