Twice as expensive, twice as long. The Bellechasse bus garage of the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) is expected to exceed half a billion dollars and will not be delivered until the summer of 2024, learned The Press.
Posted at 7:30 p.m.
The huge pit dug to house the underground building turned out to be a bottomless pit for the transporter: the rock, which was much less solid than expected, and the extension of the site forced emergency work to be carried out to stabilize the temporary structure. All this inflates bills and deadlines. The garage was originally expected to cost 254 million and be completed by the end of 2021.
“It’s not a comfortable situation as general manager, I tell you,” said Marie-Claude Léonard, general manager of the STM, on Friday, in an interview with The Press. “We currently have an order of magnitude between 525 million and 600 million to finalize the Bellechasse transport center. »
As for delivery, “we are no longer in the waters of summer 2024”. “The commissioning will be done gradually after the summer of 2024,” she added.
PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, THE PRESS
At the end of last June, torrential rains revealed weaknesses in the ground and the structures installed at the start of the work to stabilize it.
Once inaugurated, the work should accommodate 200 buses, including electric ones, and replace the Saint-Denis garage.
“For me, the important thing is to say that we do everything, we manage public funds and we manage them well,” said Ms.me Leonard, on the phone. We are able to explain why we have reached these amounts, and through that we learn lessons to improve. »
The STM will have to ask the Montreal City Council to re-borrow money to pay the new costs of the project. The exact amount will be announced next month.
Emergency works
The Bellechasse garage will be located near the intersection of boulevard Saint-Laurent and rue de Bellechasse, in Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie.
At the end of last June, torrential rains revealed weaknesses in the ground and the structures installed at the start of the work to stabilize it. According to an engineer’s report commissioned by the STM, small scree (“scour”) occurred on the face of the hole. Shops and residences are nearby.
In a situation where “the lives of people or equipment are in danger”, the STM can award an emergency contract, which it did, explained Mr.me Leonardo. “There was a sense of urgency. A call for tenders has been launched to find a contractor who will continue to consolidate the rock, but we are assured that the danger has been averted.
An engineer’s report The Press was able to consult describes “anomalies” and questions the lifespan of the “Berlin wall” – the structure installed on the side of the pit to prevent rock slides. This one was designed for only two years: the delays of the project made it obsolete.
It was not the first time that the STM detected problems in the quality of the rock it was digging.
From the start of the project, in 2020, “we realized that there was a portion of rock that was of poor quality,” said Ms.me Leonardo. As the workers opened the pit, “the situation developed in the wrong direction”.
“The pre-feasibility studies were not sufficiently detailed and the rock analyzes that we had did not [prévu] the rock stakes we had afterwards,” she said. “We were supposed to have solid rock. »
Inflation and labor shortage
In addition to these contingencies, the STM gives other explanations for the explosion of costs: the initial budget did not provide for a large enough contingency fund, while the labor shortage and current inflation have scrambled the cards.
“At the STM, we like to learn from what we learn,” said Ms.me Leonardo. For us, there are learning lessons in project management that can be applied at other levels, [notamment] to ensure that our pre-feasibility studies are sufficiently detailed and exhaustive. »
The boss of the STM did not want to exclude the possibility of lawsuits against the firms which produced the rock analyzes which proved to be inaccurate. “We have to expect that the STM will want to get the money it deserves if we are able to demonstrate that there was fault and error in this case,” she said.
The Bellechasse garage was initially to be built on the surface, but the STM decided to make it an underground structure at the end of 2018.
A budget increase from 254 million to 370 million had already been announced in May 2020.