Hamilton councillor rips government agency for stadium delays: Metro Morning

Tim Hortons Field is open for business, nearly a year later than initial plans.

In anticipation of July's Pan Am Games, a ribbon cutting ceremony is scheduled late Friday afternoon for the stadium's official opening.

Hamilton Coun. Lloyd Ferguson, who is the chair of Hamilton's Pan Am subcommittee and has over 30 years of construction experience, called in to Metro Morning to discuss the delays and lenient contractor penalties. 

Here's an abridged and edited version of Ferguson's conversation with host Helen Mann.

Why did this take so long?

There were nine completion dates missed. June 30, 2014 was the initial date, then it went to August then September then October all the way to March, and now we've finally got it done. The contracting authority was Infrastructure Ontario, who has a pretty good reputation of finishing projects on time, but this one got away. In my view, I don't think the consequences were high enough to the consortium that got the contract?

So there should have been stiffer fines against them for the lateness?

Yeah. Higher penalties. The penalty that Infrastructure Ontario had was they don't get paid for half of it. They did get paid for half when they hit the 50 per cent mark. The penalties were inconsequential. It's certainly a lot less cost to wait for their money than it is to pay a penalty. And with the Pan Am Games coming up, this is something that can embarrass our city and embarrass our country. It should have been a [penalty] of $50,000 a day.

Would that kind of penalty be standard?

No question. There are two things that contractors know very well. The first would be health and safety and the second is money. If I were running that project, I'd be sitting behind a calculator just doing arithmetic — what's the cost of taking longer and what's the cost of ship premiums and overtime? And I did that on this project and it's clearly a lot less money to just take more time.

Has the rough winter been a factor?

Sure. They have been tough winters, although it is Canada. When you're bidding on contracts, it's not hard to find out what the climate is like. But that might account for a month, not ten months. We're very happy that it's done now. We're very happy with the finished product. Our staff cut the keys last Thursday. We had a city events team in last night, and we're having a ribbon cutting today at 2:00 p.m.

Do you think the first contractor's unfamiliarity with the area, being a French company, played a factor in the delays?

No question. I still don't understand why a Canadian company couldn't have built this. I kept asking those questions. Why are we only short-listing international contractors? There were only three contractors short-listed, and none of them were Canadian. That didn't make a lot of sense to me because they don't have any skill to gain, they don't have to face the community and come back to our city in the future. But it was Infrastructure Ontario's decision and they chose to go that route.

I understand you urged your mayor to write a letter to the premier. What did it say? What was the response?

It said we need a hard and fast date. It's been ten months. Our patience is running out and we're getting dangerously close - we turn the stadium over on June 1st to Toronto 2015. Our local police have to get in there to make sure the security is in place. And they wanted to be in by May 1st at the latest. All that was being pushed back, so we decided to go to the president of Infrastructure Ontario and copy the premier and the minister of infrastructure. This time it worked. Almost a week later we got what's called a "substantial completion," which means it's reached the point where it can be used for the purpose intended.

What's the highlight for you of having this space?

It's a shiny new space. It's got 24,000 seats. There are some great community rooms in it. The Tiger-Cats, which is really the face of Hamilton, have offices now in the stadium. It's got first class dressing rooms. But most importantly is the field. The scoreboard is very high tech. When you watch replays, it's like watching your large screen in your man cave. 

We all got a chance to review the design. There were some pretty serious deficiencies. We had some leaks coming into the office buildings because caulking didn't work. 

Are you confident that's been addressed now?

Yes. They removed it all and put in all new stuff. I asked what happened, and they were pointing to the manufacturer, pointing to the caulking and playing the blame game. At the end of the day, it got fixed.