Thanks for your info/thoughts on it. I'm getting a bit off topic here, and I may need to be pointed to another discussion thread, but why are the infrastructure costs here so much higher here (maybe in North America than Europe in general)? Is it labor costs, tougher to build-to engineering/building/safety/environmental standards, higher expropriation costs (even for subsurface)? I find it hard to believe that there would be so much more political grift here than in Europe. Are we just lazy/incompetent when it comes to procurement?
The easy part of that equation is soft costs. Consultants, Business Cases, lots of things that either don't exist or are employed more sparingly elsewhere.
There are other factors. In general, P3s as we structure them cost more than old-school procurement. There are two discrete and clear factors. The first is that large, high-risk contracts have a limited number of bidders, which means low competition. In Ontario, Ellis Don or Aecon are on almost every large bid, that makes for typically 2 bids max and if one takes a pass, just 1 bid.
But add to that, we have a bad habit of tendering at 60% design, which leaves lots of room for change orders and estimates that are far from Class 1 (tight).
On top of that, we do have a very strange construction culture here that is wide-spread, of having far too few workers on site, and delivering projects with 5-day weeks and 1 shift per day.
This is just profoundly inefficient. Its not universal here, but it is much more common than would be accepted in much of the world.
There are other issues, and there are countless reports on these, most documented on UT in one thread or another.......but these really are at the heart of the matter.
It is fair to point out though, that Spain which has been discussed in this thread is a relatively lower wage, lower land cost country compared with urban Canada, which doesn't excuse our shortcomings, but does play a role in the pricing difference.
