Aurora's joint operations centre will be $2.2M over budget: auditor
Audit report cites overspending due to project mismanagement, lack of policy

YorkRegion.com
April 9, 2018
Teresa Latchford

When fully complete, Aurora’s joint operations centre will come in $2.2 million over budget.

Brook Laker and Associates, whose services were retained to conduct a third-party review related to the construction of the joint operations centre, supervised by York Region’s internal audit services department, recently presented its findings to town council. The report concluded the project was underfunded from the beginning and it was mismanaged throughout including discipline, documentation, co-ordination and reporting.

Currently, the project is $455,000 over budget and will require an additional $1.9 million to complete in 2018.

“We recognized during the review a lack of proper project management protocol,” York Region internal audit services director Paul Duggan said. “While a formal management policy needs to be put into place, we have found nothing indicating we need to continue with a forensic investigation.”

In Duggan’s opinion, the project didn’t have enough budgeted to cover cost from the start and as a result changes were made to the scope to keep it within the established budget.

However, he pointed out the investigation didn’t find any evidence of unauthorized spending, misconduct or any other serious abnormalities.

“The lack of reporting didn’t allow council to grab this by the horns,” he continued. “You didn’t have the information in front of you that you should have.”

The report also concluded the town lacks formal policies outlining how a project will be scoped, designed, costed, managed and reported and made a number of recommendations including taking a team approach when overseeing a project, no single staff person should have power to make decisions alone, finance services must track costs and there needs to be a clear definition of what information needs to be reported to council.

“We have noted that town staff has already undertaken this,” Duggan said. “We recommend that when you have completed the methodology you have it reviewed.”

In 2009, the town began discussions about needing a new joint operations centre that would better equip the town to meet the needs of its growing population. The site was purchased in 2014, a detailed design and a contractor was selected in 2015 with an approved budget of $20.3 million.

From there, $843,912 was spent on soil remediation, $75,400 to hire a project management company which was raised to $129,800, and architectural fees increased to $1.1 million from $954,804 among other listed overages not appearing in the approved budget totalling $760, 300.

A final report for the project was presented to council in January 2017, prompting a request from the treasurer to outline the project budget and costs. Following the presentation of the findings, council commissioned an independent review and report on the project, costs and lessons that could be learned.

Council voted in favour of the town chief administrative officer implementing and overseeing project management discipline for current major construction projects underway until a project management policy is put into place.

Also, town staff are to get approval of the items required to complete the joint operations centre that were conditionally approved in the 2018 capital budget.