When Contractors Fall Short, Why Won’t City Hall Hold Them Accountable?

Three recent projects in my neighbourhood show just how little oversight is happening.

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Quality control much?

It is remarkable how often public works completed by the City of Ottawa do not live up to expectations.

In all fairness, there are lots of public services that work fine. My garbage gets picked up reliably. I don’t have to worry about the quality of my drinking water.

But given the amount of public money involved, any screw-ups get a lot of attention. And when I look at recent public works in my neighbourhood, I can’t understand why we’re letting contractors get away with this stuff.

Where’s the quality control? Who’s holding contractors to deliver what they promised?

Consider these three examples.

1. Sidewalk repairs that don’t last a winter

Last summer, I watched a crew address cracks in the sidewalk, by covering them with a mound of hot asphalt.

It was a team of two contractors, with a city worker supervising them.

They poured a big bulging mound of asphalt over any cracks in the pavement.

The image below shows how that repair work held up. The yellow lines indicate where the patching was originally applied.

For many patches, that asphalting didn’t last a single winter. Some barely survived the first pass of the snowplow.

Surely someone in the public works department knows how to fix cracks in sidewalks. And yet, we spend thousands, if not millions, on an approach that any casual observer could tell you is unlikely to last for more than a few months.

2. Sweeping the Flora Footbridge

The Flora Footbridge over the Canal has been swept twice now.

But there is still a mess of grit at the side of the pathway. And there is no sign that it’s going to get removed.

Why has the City not called back the contractors to get the job done right?

3. Bumpy brand-new bike lanes

On one block of Glebe Avenue, the City replaced the sewers and road. They rebuilt the road to current standards (good!) which includes safe infrastructure for all users (i.e., bike lanes and sidewalks).

The work looks very nice, but there is one problem. The brand new bike lane is bumpy. I simply don’t understand how this can happen. The new road a few feet away is perfectly smooth. But the bike lane is a bumpy hot mess — probably too bumpy for, say, a skateboarder to use.

You may love or hate bike lanes, but we can all agree that if taxpayers are going to spend money to build something, let’s have it built to the standards laid out in the contract.

My theory of what’s going on

Why do we let contractors get away with substandard work?

I believe there are two factors at play.

First of all, City Hall relies so heavily on outsourcing that they’ve lost the ability to think critically. A contractor tells them the job is up to standard, and City Hall doesn’t know better or have the confidence to push back.

Second, I suspect that many city staff feel disempowered and that they don’t have the authority to push back on contractors. I also believe that senior management at the City has far too cozy a relationship with local developers and construction companies that they might have even cultivated a culture within City Hall to not challenge contractors.

I could see a supervisor questioning the quality of a contractor’s work, only to have the contractor phone someone senior at City Hall, who in turn sends down the message to “back off”.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is another reason that we’re getting such shoddy work.

If there are any city or industry insiders who would like to share their own perspective on what’s going on, use a personal email account to reply to this message. Your response will remain confidential.