Documents reveal how SNC-Lavalin managed to win Trillium Line contract
High score for financial submission cemented company’s bid against rivals
A pile of procurement documents published Monday sought to address many of the outstanding questions around SNC-Lavalin’s controversial and ultimately successful bid to extend the northsouth O-Train Trillium Line, a $1.6-billion construction and maintenance contract.
City manager Steve Kanellakos highlighted one piece of news in a memo to mayor and council accompanying the documents’ release:
“TransitNEXT was the only bid that met the city’s affordability threshold — on a net present value basis, the other two bids were approximately $100 million and several hundred million dollars more — money that would have had to come exclusively from the City of Ottawa taxpayer.”
While it’s long been known that SNC-Lavalin, under the name TransitNEXT, was head-andshoulders above the other two proponents pursuing the contract, the dollar value of that difference has been a mystery.
In fact, it remains so — the documents published Monday redacted the detailed dollar amounts involved, with the city noting it has asked the proponents to consent to the release of this information.
But at least it’s now roughly known how the other proponents fared relative to the city’s affordability cap: $663.1 million for capital cost, $1.73 billion aggregate including the Trillium Line’s longterm maintenance. SNC came in $50,000 under the capital cap, and nearly $11.8 million under the aggregate cap.
The documents also show that while SNC’s bid scored 450 out of a possible 450 for its total submission price, it only scored 35 out of 50 on the quality of its proposed financing plan, the lowest score of all three proponents on this measure, and the minimum score stipulated in the request for proposal.
However, SNC’s overall financial submission score — 485 out of 500 — blew competitors Trillium Link and Trillium Extension Alliance out of the water (they scored just 212.32 and 93.39, respectively).
On the technical side, the documents show that none of the three proponent submissions had “material
deviations” flagged — meaning, “a non-conformance that is so significant that it could lead to the disqualification of a proposal from further consideration.”
Some less-serious deficiencies were identified in all three submissions. In SNC’s case, these included a lack of detail around the signalling system it would implement, a “non-conformant” platform design at Uplands Station, and the absence of LED lighting along a pedestrian bridge guardrail.
Documents show how SNC pledged to address each of these in the contract negotiation phase with city officials, prior to being recommended as the preferred proponent.
As has already been established, TransitNEXT had the lowest technical submission score — 336.35 out of 500, below a 70 per cent minimum threshold set out for the procurement.
While the city has maintained that the decision to allow SNC-Lavalin to continue to the next stage of the process despite its sub-par technical score was based on legal advice, the exact nature of that advice was also revealed in Monday’s documents.
Outside lawyers suggested that if the city was concerned the technical evaluation had been based on “criteria that is not clearly established in the request for proposals,” then SNC-Lavalin might have a legal case for challenging the final result.
Another detail of note is that when members of the procurement’s executive steering committee decided to allow the SNC bid to proceed, they had not reviewed the proponent’s (very competitive) financial submission.
All of the documents released Monday are available on the city’s website for public review.
“These documents, when reviewed in their entirety, show that the complex, lengthy and fully documented procurement process was conducted in the fair, open and transparent manner,” Kanellakos said.
City councillors will have a chance to come to their own conclusions and question city officials on the documents in the coming days — both privately, and before a special finance and economic development committee meeting on March 9.