As I said before obviously in official public documents it says that bbr won because they were able to quote lower, but the point it why were they able to in the first place? Siemens in Europe is like bbr is to N.A. being they are large multinational corporations spanning several product portfolios however Bbr has the perpetual advantage because they are well established in canada and especially in Ont, not to mention they are a canadian sourced company to begin with, so for sure they undercut any day.
First of all, it's a pretty globalized marketplace. Both Bombardier's train division and Siemens's are headquartered in Germany, both rely on assembly plants in places like Mexico to do much of their primary fabrication. Final assembly (in Thunder Bay or wherever) is a pretty small piece of the pie.
Siemens quite happily won the original (cancelled by O'Brien) contract for Ottawa's LRVs. Alstom (ie not Bombardier) won the subsequent contract for the present-day version of that project. This is with the same "Buy Canadian" rules that Toronto has. There aren't similar "Buy Canadian" requirements in Alberta, as far as I know, and Siemens has won basically every LRV procurement for Calgary and Edmonton over the last two decades.
Yes, BBD does get a head start of sorts over the competition so long as Ontario has the procurement rules it does, but Ottawa proves they're not guaranteed to win everything.
Also even if they had gone with the quoted price on the bid whoever it is, that does not equate to the final price. There are also other ancillary costs such as fees for changes to spec and equipment, engineering and late fees. Remember these trains are not off the shelf, they are bespoke tailored to TTC's specs (especially the rockets) and essentially are engineered from a basic platform. Those costs are factored in after the contract is signed, and since they have a deep relationship with the gta, the city can be comforted with the fact that there will be some leniency on extras since they are dealing with longtime customers. Ever wonder why projects go over budget? Its extras, which is not covered in the contract.
I'm sorry, but the more you write the more it becomes clear this is totally creative writing on your part you don't have the faintest clue how public sector procurement works.
TTC put out an RFP to both Siemens and Bombardier. The necessary requirements to permit the new streetcars to run on the existing Toronto track network was included in the specs (turning radius, climbing ability, uphill pushing ability etc.). Both Siemens and Bombardier separately and simultaneously went to their engineers and each pulled together a draft design that met those TTC performance specs. Both Siemens and Bombardier separately and simultaneously came up with a cost quote as to how much they proposed to charge in order to build their respective LRV. Both had to factor in a certain risk premium into their quote to account for the possibility that they would incur more costs than they expected as they took their designs from preliminary to final while continuing to meet the previously-set performance specs. The TTC then looked at their bids, confirmed both met specs, then opened the cost envelope and found that one number was a fair bit bigger than the other.
Got it? The "bespoke" customization costs were baked into both bid figures.
There are indeed potential change order costs that add up on top of the awarded contract figure, but those are for things the TTC didn't put in its specs and later decided it wanted. And, particularly in a billion-dollar public sector procurement, there's no such thing as "deep relationship" and "leniency on extras". This isn't buying a car from your brother in law. Bombardier owes it to their shareholders that they will push the customer as hard as possible to get the best possible deal for their business.
Even if someone at the TTC were to try and wink and handshake Bombardier for a cheap change order, there'd be no legal way for Bombardier to be rewarded for their fealty by getting a head start in a future procurement process, so why would on earth Bombardier consider it? They're a multi-billion $ private conglomerate, and so long as they're not actively blacklisted from TTC procurement, they don't much care whether Andy Byford sends them a Christmas card or not.
Finally, the Rockets are far closer to an "off-the-shelf" product than the streetcars.
Sure bombardier won based on cost, but im also sure that it wasnt the sole reason even in an open tender behind closed doors...
Are you alleging corruption? That's what it looks like.
