Not All Projects Go Over Budget: WHOPPER WATCH
“There are delays and cost overruns with every major infrastructure project in the world, that’s not unusual.”
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe
What?
Now there’s a standard to which we should always strive.
Every major infrastructure project in the world has cost overruns? Really?
The former Corel Centre (now the Canadian Tire Centre) was done quickly and efficiently. No reports have appeared on cost overruns on all the construction along Highway 417. The Transportation Expansion Project in Denver
in 2006 widened major highways and constructed light rail in the Denver. It finished just less than two years ahead of schedule and 3.2 per cent less than the $1.67-billion budget.
Ottawa light rail? Well, maybe not.
Sutcliffe should know this as a former journalist but there are not a lot of stories on projects that were completed successfully.
Maybe from an Ottawa municipal viewpoint, it might look like every project goes over-budget, but they don’t always in other jurisdictions. In fact, you can make an argument that most do get completed successfully. They just don’t draw headlines for getting the job down right.
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– The Bulldog – News Feed Enter 
Mayor Sutcliffe’s quote is as prescient a statement as has ever been uttered.
His comment supports a major concern that many residents have about Lansdowne 2.0. It will go over budget. Not just the fiction that is the $420ish million that staff continue to claim, but over the $500ish million that the city AG has stated as being more realistic.
Prudent councillors should be prepared to play that quote back whenever Lansdowne is on the agenda.
I worked mostly in Major Capital Projects in my career. The problem starts with say a budget made in 2020 and work starting in 2022 as inflation-wise, they are already 6% over budget. So they scramble to try to change the project to make it affordable and it is through these changes that the problems really start.
What Mark Sutcliffe really meant to say was “There are delays and cost overruns with every major infrastructure project in the world, that is poorly planned, badly managed, and not monitored”.
There is mayor Sutcliffe falling within the city motto: strive to be average
Sisco,
You took the words right out of my mouth! I would only add “and suffers political interference”.