What Happened To City Quality Control?
Quality control much? It is remarkable how often public works completed by the City of Ottawa do not live up to expectations.
In all fairness, there are lots of public services that work fine. My garbage gets picked up reliably. I don’t have to worry about the quality of my drinking water.
But given the amount of public money involved, any screw-ups get a lot of attention. And when I look at recent public works in my neighbourhood, I can’t understand why we’re letting contractors get away with this stuff.
Where’s the quality control? Who’s holding contractors to deliver what they promised?
Consider these three examples.
1. Sidewalk repairs that don’t last a winter
Last summer, I watched a crew address cracks in the sidewalk, by covering them with a mound of hot asphalt.
It was a team of two contractors with a City of Ottawa worker supervising them.
They poured a big bulging mound of asphalt over any cracks in the pavement.
For many patches, that asphalting didn’t last a single winter. Some barely survived the first pass of the snowplow.
Surely someone in the public works department knows how to fix cracks in sidewalks. And yet, we spend thousands, if not millions, on an approach that any casual observer could tell you is unlikely to last for more than a few months.
2. Sweeping the Flora Footbridge
The Flora Footbridge over the Rideau Canal has been swept twice now.
But there is still a mess of grit at the side of the pathway. And there is no sign that it’s going to get removed.
Why has the city not called back the contractors to get the job done right?
3. Bumpy brand-new bike lanes
On one block of Glebe Avenue, the city replaced the sewers and road. They rebuilt the road to current standards (good) which includes safe infrastructure for all users (i.e., bike lanes and sidewalks).
The work looks very nice, but there is one problem. The brand new bike lane is bumpy. I simply don’t understand how this can happen. The new road a few feet away is perfectly smooth. But the bike lane is a bumpy hot mess — probably too bumpy for, say, a skateboarder to use.
You may love or hate bike lanes, but we can all agree that if taxpayers are going to spend money to build something, let’s have it built to the standards laid out in the contract.
My theory of what’s going on
Why do we let contractors get away with substandard work?
I believe there are two factors at play.
First, Ottawa City Hall relies so heavily on outsourcing that they’ve lost the ability to think critically. A contractor tells them the job is up to standard, and city hall doesn’t know better or have the confidence to push back.
Second, I suspect that many city staff members feel disempowered and that they don’t have the authority to push back on contractors. I also believe that senior management at the city has far too cozy a relationship with local developers and construction companies that they might have even cultivated a culture within city hall to not challenge contractors.
I could see a supervisor questioning the quality of a contractor’s work, only to have the contractor phone someone senior at city hall, who in turn sends down the message to “back off”.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is another reason that we’re getting such shoddy work.
Neil Saravanamuttoo is a former G20 infrastructure chief economist, director of CitySHAPES and the author of The 613 on Substack.
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Does the City also have a policy in place that states you must accept the lowest bid for contracted services?
The standard for work performed on behalf of the city should be “Would you accept this if it was on your property?” In contrast, the city standard is “Ticket closed. Next.” It all comes down to culture.
In response to point 1 I’d add that roadways are composed of asphalt while sidewalks are made of concrete. While I’m not a chemist, I guess the 2 substances don’t fuse very well and attempting to use a pothole filling solution for a broken sidewalk is not viable.
sisco, per Councillor Laine Johnson’s constituency office staff, the reason that the city uses asphalt to fix concrete sidewalks is expediency. The city can send out a crew with a truck full of cold patch and complete a number of tickets (see my comment above) in a day. In contrast, using concrete to patch concrete takes a different set of tools, skills and most importantly, more time. That asphalt patches on concrete sidewalks don’t last long and look terrible is not part of the criteria for success. Again – culture.