'A little bit of a red flag': Valley Line West LRT shortlist includes SNC-Lavalin
An elevated guideway for the west leg of the Valley Line LRT would look similar to this, covering a span from 146 Street to 154 Street in order to avoid traffic at 149 Street along Stony Plain Road.
Embattled Quebec engineering firm SNC-Lavalin is one of three contenders vying to build the west leg of the Valley Line LRT.
The shortlist for the 14-kilometre extension from downtown to Lewis Farms includes three teams made up of a consortium of companies and guarantors, all seeking to design, build and partially finance the project.
The three groups selected to proceed to the request for proposal stage include:
• Flatiron/AECON/Dragados Valley Line West Joint Venture
• Urban Mobility Partners
• WestLINK Group
The company behind the WestLINK team is SNC-Lavalin, a Montreal-based engineering and construction giant firm facing fraud and corruption charges.
“Obviously, that name has got a little bit of a red flag attached to it,” said Ward 9 Coun. Tim Cartmell Wednesday after the list was released. “It’s been in the news, but SNC does infrastructure works all over the world and I’m sure that our administration has done our due diligence to ensure that this is a proponent that is going to be able to deliver the project, at least until we see the final proposals.”
SNC-Lavalin is accused of paying $47.7 million in bribes to public officials in Libya between 2001 and 2011. The company, its construction division and a subsidiary also face one charge each of fraud and corruption for allegedly defrauding various Libyan organizations of $129.8 million.
If convicted, the company could be banned from bidding on federal government projects for up to 10 years.
Ward 1 Coun. Andrew Knack said it was “interesting” to learn that SNC-Lavalin made the shortlist as council members aren’t involved in the bidding process, but he said he’s confident the city’s fairness monitor and other contract measures will get the city the best contract and protect it from any situations that could arise as a consequence of SNC-Lavalin’s legal situation.
“The fact that we have two other very well-qualified groups that are bidding on this gives me comfort that we’re not going to be put in a situation where we’re not suddenly going to get value for what is a really critical project,” he said.
The city expects to announce the chosen bid in 2020. Construction will follow, and it is anticipated the line will be up and running in 2026 or 2027.
TransEd, the group of companies developing the Valley Line southeast extension, did not make a bid for the west extension, spokeswoman Sue Heuman said in an email Wednesday. Bruce Ferguson, the city’s LRT expansion and renewal manager, said each of the companies that comprise TransEd were given an opportunity to bid, but many opted not to. Bombardier, which is doing trains for the southeast extension, has indicated it would like to bid on trains for the west extension, but that part of the procurement won’t come until later, Ferguson said.
Unlike the southeast extension, which is being developed as a P3 project (a public-private partnership), the west line will be built as a “design, build, finance”, which means the chosen developer will partially finance the work, and will be incentivized to progress the project by payments being released only upon reaching certain milestones.
Through its P3 with the city, TransEd designed, is building, and will operate the southeast extension for 30 years. The 13-kilometre line will run between Mill Woods and downtown, and is supposed to be in operation by 2020.
Ferguson said decisions about the best way to operate the two extensions as a “seamless” line will be figured out in a few years once the southeast leg is up and running.
“It will be a single line end to end,” he said.
— With files from the Canadian Press
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