Winnipeg Chief Construction Officer Tom Sparrow says he wants to meet with members of the heavy construction industry, including touring infrastructure projects, to get a better sense of the work underway and the challenges from the industry’s perspective.
Sparrow made those comments in a lengthy meeting April 30 with senior representatives of the MHCA Board of Directives, at the invitation of the association.
Sparrow brings more than 35 years of experience in construction and infrastructure management across both the public and private sectors to the role. He has led major projects including hospitals, schools, airports and data centres across British Columbia and Yukon, with project values ranging from tens of millions to over $1 billion.
His immediate and longer-term priorities are about ensuring project cost containment and value for money through planning, oversight and verified cost-estimates prior to tendering and contracting, and through project completion.
The steps include:
- Oversight of the North End Water Pollution Control Centre, the cost estimate of which has spiraled from about $800 million in 2018 to $3 billion, recently.
- Capital project policies and reporting
- Increasing bidder participation
- Validation of cost estimates, from both public administration and contractors
- This will include evaluating the impact of change orders
- Ensuring cost estimates reflect current pricing, rather than years earlier
- Creating greater transparency, accuracy and accountability in project management, while reducing the current levels of internal reporting at the City
- Improved coordination among multiple agencies and utilities to relieve impact on the flow of traffic from roadworks
- Increasing delivery of construction project
- Reviewing bid models and procurement strategies, including piloting of multi-year tendering to coordinate with, especially, Manitoba Transportation & Infrastructure project planning
- allowing industry to understand the opportunities and to set out business plans regarding capacity, capital acquisition and workforce demands
To see Sparrow’s slide-deck presentation, click here.
MHCA presented priorities that it regards as critical to efficient tendering, program delivery and for best value for the City’s capital construction infrastructure programs.
They include:
- collaboration, in a relationship of trust, between the City departments and industry
- early engineering design awards
- early tendering and timely awards to contractors
- monitoring prices against pre-tender estimates
- prompt payment
- post-project rating of public owner, the consultants and the contractors
For a complete list of the MHCA priorities, click here.
“This was a very welcome and comprehensive discussion with the Chief Construction Officer,” MHCA President & CEO Chris Lorenc said.
“We think he can be central to helping administration stream-line process, clarify roles and responsibilities to assist both administration and industry in achieving and delivering on their respective responsibilities. All of this can help ensure that the municipal infrastructure investments and the programs return highest and best value to the taxpayer.”
Most welcome was Sparrow’s invitation to meet regularly with the MHCA and to meet with industry members, including onsite at construction projects.
“We are encouraged by Mr. Sparrow’s genuine desire to learn, first hand, about the work we do, how its delivery is tied to program tendering and to the City’s infrastructure investment strategies. These reviews can affect not just cost management of very large projects, but in efficiently and cost-effectively delivering road and related construction projects resulting in their noticeable improvement.”
