| Client: | City of Toronto | Size: | 760,000 sq. ft. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project Type: | Heritage, Roads, Highways & Rail Infrastructure, Toronto, Ontario Projects | Project Challenge: | Cost Management, Delay & Overrun Avoidance |
| Program Areas | |||
| platform upgradestrain shedheritagemasonry restoration | |||
Union Station Redevelopment
Manage the cost of changes on large-scale projects
Toronto’s historical Union Station, which originally opened in 1927, is undergoing a major redevelopment project featuring the addition of a new roof and glass atrium built over the passenger platforms and railway tracks that will allow natural light to flood the platforms and take away the oppressive atmosphere created by existing dark roof. But the size, complexity and the lack of accurate knowledge of the existing conditions would present a challenge to this project’s budget.
The city was aware of these challenges and that they would likely result in the need for issuing sizable revisions to the project budget — they would require expert services to ensure costs for revisions were under control. A.W. Hooker Associates was engaged to review and monitor the Change submissions from the Project Co and provided an independent analysis and recommendation on each submission.
AW. Hooker also provided the City with recommendations regarding several contractual issues. Over the course of these reviews, A.W. Hooker discovered that in additional to the standard overcharging on materials and labour which contractors normally include in their change submissions, it was also found there were contractual issues that were driving up costs.
During the issuance of contracts for this project, Project Co had not made sure that the contractual obligations to the City were passed on to Project Co’s sub-trades. By doing a thorough review, of not only the contract between the City and Project Co but also the contracts between Project Co and their sub-trades, we were able to save the City from having to bear additional costs created by Project Co’s oversight by not binding their sub-trades to their terms and conditions with the City.
The result of our diligence in reviewing all aspects of the contracts was a significant decrease in the cost of the change submissions from Project Co to the City. The savings with regards to just the contractual issues was in the range of 15%.