For many years, city officials have told Ottawa residents that they can feel confident in the fact that the Confederation Line has been approved by an independent certifying body.
It was no different at Monday’s public inquiry into Ottawa’s streetcar transportation, when the city manager testified that he would never bow to pressure to launch the LRT prematurely.
“I ended up relying on the independent certifying body and the independent safety auditor to give me the certifications that basically said this system was fit, ready to go and safe,” testified Steve Kanellakos, city manager.
“That’s what I had to rely on. I couldn’t rely on what happens in making the sausage.”
The role of the independent certifier hired by the city and Rideau Transit Group was not consulted on changes to the LRT contract or trial performance criteria. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
It’s unclear whether councilors or the public fully understand these oversight roles, but witness testimony over the past few days has shed some light on their true nature.
Altus Group’s Monica Cecchiari, an engineer with decades of experience, was the leader of the independent certification team hired by city developer Rideau Transit Group (RTG). Her role, she told the commission conducting the inquiry, was to certify that specific stages of the project had been completed.
She did this by looking at reports and other documentation—Sechiari’s team is not a technical advisor, nor an engineer of record.
Secchiari testified that when the contract between RTG and the city was changed in 2019, her team was not consulted. Instead, it changed its scorecard to match the revised contract.
The independent certifier acted as a mediator when the city and RTG could not agree. That happened in May 2019, when RTG said the LRT system was essentially complete — which would have resulted in a $59 million payout — but the city disagreed.
Sechari took the necessary five days to review both sides’ arguments and documentation and agreed with the city that the LRT was not done.
But if both parties agree to new requirements or changes to the contract, Cecchiari says that as an independent certifier, she will generally go along with what the city and RTG want to do.
“It would be very, very unlikely” that an independent certification body would interfere with an agreement between two parties, she testified.
In July 2019, three months after the disagreement over whether or not the LRT was substantially complete, the city agreed to accept RTG’s contention that the Confederation Line was substantially complete, even though long list of unresolved items stayed.
The city was willing to waive the requirement that certain deficiencies — including “failure to meet fleet requirements due to continuing defects/deficiencies” — be met by substantial completion.
The agreement was that the remaining work would be completed by the time the LRT was handed over to the city.
“We were not consulted in the preparation of this significant completion agreement,” Secchiari told the committee. “We have not done an independent investigation [and] it was not our role to do so.”
No role in trial performance criteria
In his four hours of testimony Monday morning, Kanellakos was questioned about why the criteria for what was supposed to be 12 consecutive days of LRT trial runs were changed midway through final testing and why the council was not notified.
The investigation heard that after a disastrous start to the trial testing, which included seven days of failures in the first 11 days, the city and RTG decided to revert to an earlier and easier version of the criteria.
Kanellakos testified that he told council members he would report back to them only after the trial run was over and that final testing was “a process … It’s not about what happened one day, one hour or one week.”
What is important, he said, is whether the system successfully meets the requirements of “the independent certification body, the independent safety officer, the RTG engineers, their own independent engineers.”
Secchiari testified that while she was part of the test launch review team, she had nothing to do with formulating the actual criteria for the test launch or changing it.
“We weren’t consulted on it, we weren’t given a signature or approval for it, and it’s not our role,” she said.
Cecchiari said that even if the criteria “were low,” she wouldn’t object as long as the requirements matched what was in the contract — even if the contract had been changed.
City Manager Steve Kanellakos, right, was questioned by committee co-lead counsel John Adair during the public inquiry into Ottawa’s public transit Monday. (Ottawa Light Rail Transit Public Inquiry Webcast)
Her role was to understand the agreed criteria, “witness some of the trial run” and attend the daily meeting where the results were discussed. If there was disagreement as to whether the day had passed or not, the independent certifying authority would intervene.
However, Secchiari herself was absent during the summer 2019 trial run and a junior member attended the testing instead.
The independent certifier also signed off on the official handover of the Confederation Line on 30 August 2019. As with substantial completion, there were still outstanding items to be addressed by the time the system was publicly released in mid-September. The inquiry found that it was not the job of the independent certifier to ensure that the work was completed.
The role of the paper safety auditor
Last Friday, before Mayor Jim Watson testifiedthe inquiry heard by Sergio Mammoliti, of the consulting firm TUV Rhineland, hired by the city in 2017 as an independent safety auditor.
Mammoliti testified that his role was to make sure that safety-based processes and procedures were followed. His role did not include inspection of the system – in fact he based his work on the assumption that the LRT was being built to its specific design – nor was he involved in any way in the trial run.
His work is “almost entirely” document-based, the commission heard.
The inquest begins its 16th day of testimony Tuesday with STV Inc.’s consultant. Larry Goll, followed by OC Transpo Director of Operations, Troy Charter.
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