The government and even the City of Quebec will not know the price of the tramway until the third week of November. The competing consortia have until November 2 to submit their offers, but it will take 14 to 21 days to validate their compliance.
During this time, no one will have legal authority to open the envelopes to take a look at the cost of the proposals. “We are aiming for approximately November 22 or 23 to have the compliance study completed and to know if the consortia have submitted all the documents and if they have met the requirements,” indicated the mayor of the capital, Bruno Marchand . It is only at the end of this exercise that the City will be able to take note of the invoice, a major unknown in this matter.
The Marchand administration will then have three options.
It could begin lengthy negotiations with the preferred consortium to lower the price. This is the path that the City chose in awarding the contract to manufacture the trains to Alstom, which resulted in a jump of 43% compared to the initially estimated cost. If it decided to negotiate, the wait before announcing the final cost would prove even longer, because the legal framework would keep the parties silent. “As long as we are not very advanced in the negotiations, we will not be able to talk about the price,” said the mayor.
Second option: if the bidders’ invoices do not suit the City, it could decide not to continue the adventure with the consortia and to favor the implementation of a plan B matured “for months “. “We don’t want to be left empty-handed, we don’t want to have no options in our hands and have to start again from scratch,” explained Bruno Marchand. Last summer, faced with the announced surge in costs linked to the tramway, the elected official raised the possibility that the City would take responsibility for part of the infrastructure component which remains to be granted.
The third option is to unseal a bid at the acceptable price straight away and move forward without further ado. In the eyes of the mayor, this option appears to be the least likely. “If it happens, I will be very happy,” said Bruno Marchand. Now, when I look at the discussions we’ve had with Alstom, I think more that we are more likely to have a deposit that we will have to negotiate for. »
It is only after opening the envelopes that the City will communicate with the Ministry of Transport, the Société québécoise des infrastructures and “all stakeholders, in particular the federal government”, to present the details of the amounts to be disbursed. .
The Coalition Avenir Québec government, the main funder of the tramway, says it supports the project as long as it is carried out at a “reasonable cost”. The approval of the Council of Ministers remains necessary for the project to move forward.
The mayor does not exclude that an excessive duration of the phase of awarding the infrastructure contract could impose the postponement of the first shoveling of earth. A hypothetical signing in May, for example, could jeopardize the first construction season. “Once the contract is signed, the construction sites must get underway,” explains the mayor. That means recruiting, that means working on all the specifications submitted as part of the technical quotes… I’m not an expert, but if it just goes into May, I think we risk losing a season. »
Bruno Marchand hopes that the signing will occur “as quickly as possible”. At the same time, he concludes, “if we don’t have the right price, there’s no point in leaving too quickly.”