Infrastructure Ontario’s latest Market Update of major construction projects under procurement features three new builds under procurement and three projects that have gone from procurement to construction.
The update, released by IO president and CEO Michael Lindsay at a Toronto presentation Dec. 5, contains 31 projects currently in pre-procurement and active procurement valued at more than $35 billion.
In addition, there are 20 projects in the initial stages of planning, with scope, timing and delivery model still being determined.
Lindsay acknowledged “tumultuous” economic circumstances in his CEO’s letter but said IO is making “relentless” progress. Since 2020, IO has brought 30 projects to market, begun construction on 24 and achieved substantial completion on 30.
Lindsay said in an interview the updated project inventory “should give everybody confidence that this pipeline that we report on at least two times a year continues to be viable, active and we are hard-charging after it. We’re going to get it done. And I think the other evidence is the fact that we’ve done so much over the past four years.”
IO and its public delivery partners have been in the spotlight several times recently with Lindsay facing a barrage of reporters on Nov. 29 as he delivered the government’s business case for moving the Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place, Metrolinx’s Eglinton Crosstown LRT project still unfinished, and the future mandate of IO itself under question after the Ontario government announced it would launch a new Ontario Infrastructure Bank (OIB).
The relocation of the Science Centre was one of the three new projects announced in the Market Update, costed at $200 million to $499 million. An RFQ for the project is expected to be issued next spring.
“In my professional opinion, based on the analysis that we’ve done, it is far preferable for the Ontario Science Centre, given its mission and the programming that it delivers, to be relocated from Don Mills to a purpose-built new facility,” Lindsay told reporters Nov 29.
He denied that the advent of the OIB, which Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy said last month would be mandated to develop new projects in specific sectors, might portend a diminished role for IO.
“I think everybody can be confident that IO will continue to have a robust mandate to deliver public assets,” Lindsay said. “I think our pipeline announcement yesterday is an affirmation of precisely that, that the jobs that have been assigned Infrastructure Ontario shall continue.”
IO’s role will be complementary to that of the OIB, Lindsay suggested.
“The premise here is that there are infrastructure projects in certain asset classes that could ultimately achieve a revenue return. And the investment of governments alongside sources of private equity in connection to those projects can help ultimately bring them to realization.”
The report outlined in the last four years, IO has completed 11 hospitals, six justice facilities and 10 transit and transportation projects.
The other two new projects in the pipeline are Bigwind Lake Provincial Park and the Milton Courthouse User Experience Hub Plus.
The three projects that have completed procurement and moved into construction since the March project update are Highway 3, the CHEO 1Door4Care integrated treatment centre and Ontario Place Site Servicing.
Of the 80 projects brought to substantial completion since the inception of the program almost 20 years ago, more than two-thirds (68 per cent) have been completed on schedule and 94 per cent have been completed on budget.
Lindsay acknowledged grumbling from stakeholders that IO had been unyielding on risk allocation in recent years. Over the past four years, he said, IO has sought to update its project delivery models, an evolution that became more urgent during the pandemic and post-pandemic as the P3 sector dealt with the pandemic, supply chain discontinuity and disruptions from global conflict that have included inflation.
“It was a conversation that was going to happen anyway, about the continued evolution of these models,” Lindsay said. “And it made it that much more important to have.
“I think it’s been sighted on the right things that we needed to do in order to think about the basis of partnerships, contract forms which govern partnerships, and the right approach for individual projects and programs.”
Among recent project successes, Lindsay noted IO led the site preparation for the new Volkswagen EV battery plant in St. Thomas. IO and its partners finished the work well in advance of the Dec. 31 deadline, enabling plant construction to begin in the new year.
The total value of contracts currently in construction is approximately $43 billion, not including three Progressive P3 hospital projects in Mississauga, Ottawa and Moosonee for which IO has recently identified a development partner.
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