City councillors demanded action Monday after an auditor’s report turned up delays, cost overruns, insufficient detail and other problems in the road construction branch.
“I have to tell you, when I read this, I felt a little bit sick, thinking we were in a sense deceiving the citizens of Edmonton with respect to the projects we undertake,” Coun. Jane Batty told an audit committee meeting.
She was concerned companies bidding on one of the city’s biggest road projects – widening Whitemud Drive and Quesnell Bridge – were given more than 150 reissued drawings and price changes the day before tenders closed.
“How do they effectively come in with a realistic price when one day ahead we’re changing the requirements? To me, this is unacceptable.”
In his report, city auditor David Wiun said this was the last of eight “addenda” during the two months contractors had to respond to the tender, suggesting the city hadn’t finalized the design before asking for quotes on the $181-million job.
Although the final price has been repeatedly described as dropping to $161.7 million due to the economic slowdown, Wiun calculated it’s really about $6.4 million higher when all costs are included.
As frustrated commuters have long known, he said the rehabilitation is also taking months longer than expected and is now due to be finished at the end of August.
“Regardless of the cause of the delay, neither the design schedule risk nor the construction schedule risk was managed effectively.”
Wiun also found smaller projects run by the city are often lumped together in one “composite” budget, making it hard for politicians to understand and allowing departments to easily change what’s involved.
For example, a $1.1-million addition was made to improvements at 87th Avenue and 170th Street to pay for widening Webber Green Drive, four kilometres away.
“It is difficult to classify the Webber Green Drive project as a scope change. This does not facilitate transparency.”
He made seven recommendations, such as ensuring descriptions of projects are more complete, better quality control and improved management of consultant costs, which were all accepted by the administration.
City manager Simon Farbrother said they’re giving more projects individual budgets, as well as showing whether they’re ready to go ahead and working closely with the new project management office.
“You will see a different capital (budget) process this year than you did for the last three years,” he said, adding the moves will reduce flexibility.
“The downside to that is if council then decides to change that project, it will have to come back to council.”
A further report on the structure and impact of the project management office is due back in September.
But Coun. Karen Leibovici was concerned all the proposed changes aren’t scheduled to be completed until 2015.
“We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on capital projects … without having the assurance we have the proper management in place, it would be very hard for us to go ahead and approve (them).”
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