For the third time in less than a year, the Inspector General of Montreal denounces the poor management of contracts at the Société de transports de Montréal (STM). This time, its investigators found irregularities in three contracts concluded with a subcontractor where the spouse of a project manager from the public body worked.
Posted at 3:00 p.m.
“All of the shortcomings demonstrated are attributable to the STM,” wrote Inspector General Brigitte Bishop in her report submitted Monday to the municipal council. The Office of Inspector General (OIG) does not identify the subcontractor involved, since the latter has nothing to reproach himself with, according to the investigation.
It was within the STM itself that the contracts were mismanaged, according to the report. The STM also acknowledged in its response to the OIG “a poor understanding and application, albeit unintentional, of certain aspects of the applicable normative framework”. She also undertakes to correct the situation.
1.7 million in contracts
The three contracts, concluded between 2016 and 2021, totaled approximately $1.7 million (the last one, however, has just been canceled by the STM following the investigation). They aimed to obtain consulting services for the management and selection of employee compensation and benefit programs.
The project manager responsible for the file at the STM never informed his superiors that his spouse had an important position within the consulting firm to which the contracts were awarded.
According to the OIG’s investigation, he nevertheless modified the initial contract substantially to add mandates and increase the budget envelope, without going back to a call for tenders as required by the rules of sound management. He then organized the awarding of a second contract by mutual agreement to cover expenses already incurred under the first contract, then participated in the launching of a call for tenders for a third contract whose very restrictive criteria discouraged any competitors who might have tendered.
Several people internally reportedly expressed their concerns about the legality of certain procedures, but complete information was not provided to the STM’s board of directors, according to the report.
Appearance of conflict of interest
When the firm won the third contract, it provided an expression of interest which revealed that one of its leaders was in a relationship with the STM project manager. The leaders of the transport company did not make much of it.
“The facts revealed by the investigation show that the project manager was in a situation of apparent conflict of interest”, underlines the Inspector General in her report. By failing to declare it, he contravened the rules of the STM, she said.
The managers of the project manager within the STM also violated the organization’s code of ethics by not putting any measures in place to regulate the situation, the report continues.
Brigitte Bishop asks the STM to “quickly adopt a recovery plan” to avoid this type of situation in the future.
The BIG had already pinned the STM in 2021 for the subject of the costs of contracts signed with certain suppliers, which exploded along the way without the management returning to a call for tenders.
In February 2022, a new report from the BIG revealed “serious and serious” shortcomings in the awarding of construction contracts for the new Bellechasse transport center, an underground construction intended to accommodate 300 buses in Rosemont-La-Petite-Patrie.
The STM’s annual budget for 2022 is $1.6 billion.