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The Greater Toronto Sewer and Watermain Contractors Association (GTSWCA) held its second annual Municipal Infrastructure Summit, with presentations from representatives of the City of Toronto, Region of Peel, York Region, Durham Region, and Halton Region, who shared their insights into their respective capital infrastructure plans and key projects for the year ahead. “Municipalities are going to invest $250 billion over the next decade to rehabilitate and expand water and wastewater infrastructure,” said GTSWCA executive director Patrick McManus in his opening address. “It’s a Herculean task in front of us to build all of this water and wastewater infrastructure, which is the foundation for all growth.” During her presentation, Pina Accardi, Director, Capital Delivery Water and Wastewater, for the Regional Municipality of York discussed plans for York Region to shift to collaborative partnerships for some projects. “Early contractor engagement is going to be a very important shift in our traditional design-bid-build approach,” said Accardi. “Our thinking is that for some of the larger projects we have, we want to be able to work closely with a qualified contractor early on in the design stage. We believe that this will enable us to capitalize on the contractor’s knowledge to help complete the design and to reduce those technical and commercial uncertainties. “Early contractor engagement may also provide us the ability to advance early construction works, including the procurement of long lead time equipment even before the design is complete, thereby accelerating construction schedules and providing infrastructure sooner than the traditional design-bid-build.” The Summit also featured special guest speaker John Fletcher, executive director of the U.K.-based RICS Dispute Resolution Service, who discussed the Conflict Avoidance Process (CAP), emphasizing proactive strategies for mitigating disputes in infrastructure projects. “Clients and contractors have become increasingly concerned about the cost and the time involved in taking matters to arbitration court or to construction adjudication, as it’s known in the U.K. “So, every time you have one of these disputes, every time it doesn’t get resolved quickly, every time it gets booted into either court or to arbitration, there’s delay. The contractors don’t get paid, the subcontractors don’t get paid, and the problem goes all the way down the delivery chain. So, there is a huge international move to try and push these disputes earlier on, and largely to have them dealt with by the project delivery teams, rather than by the lawyers.” According to Fletcher, CAP was developed to help Transport for London (TfL) to resolve existing claims, early, quickly and cost-effectively, provide fair and reasonable outcome, maintain working relationships between TfL and suppliers, provide certainty of outcome, and reduce potential for future conflict. The result was after being introduced in 2016, TfL saw a decline in disputed events and not only did CAP resolve the conflicts that had already accrued, but also dramatically reduced further claims developing. |
