How can the city better co-ordinate Ottawa's construction projects?

College ward Coun. Laine Johnson is asking questions around whether the city could implement better construction co-ordination, after finding the city, province and hydro companies aren't effectively talking to each other when planning their projects. Photo by Tony Caldwell /POSTMEDIA

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It often seems like you can’t walk 10 steps in Ottawa during the summer without stumbling across the large orange and black pylons encircling a construction site.

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The city says it manages about 700 municipally funded infrastructure projects each year, with $691.3 million set aside in the 2026 budget for investments in roads, bridges, buildings and parks, as well as sidewalks and paths.

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These numbers don’t include highway work managed by the provincial Ministry of Transportation, projects on land owned by the National Capital Commission or work carried out by utility companies.

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So, what happens when a city-led construction project is breaking ground at the same time as Hydro Ottawa is planning to dig up the same street for upgrades, and how do these groups co-ordinate with each other?

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Well, according to College ward Coun. Laine Johnson, these construction projects often end up conflicting with each other, since there’s no single co-ordination office at the City of Ottawa responsible for tracking all of these projects or to help these different groups plan their projects around each other.

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“There are a lot of separate groups that are all working in the same area, but all under different managers, with different software and with different timelines that cause residents to kind of scratch their heads,” she said.

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This all came to a head earlier this summer for Johnson, as the province-led lane closures on Highway 417 happened to coincide with LRT construction around the Pinecrest and Holly Acres on- and off-ramps.

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At around the same time, she said she was presented with a detour plan for a separate construction project, which proposed rerouting cars through an intersection already dealing with construction-related lane closures.

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College ward Coun. Laine Johnson is asking questions around whether the city could implement better construction co-ordination, after finding the city, province and hydro companies aren’t effectively talking to each other when planning their projects. Photo by Tony Caldwell /POSTMEDIA

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“My impression within the city sometimes is that it’s mutually understood as a shared accountability (between staff and councillors) to co-ordinate, which can have the risk of having it be no one’s accountability,” she said. “And I’m not sure that residents aren’t left at the short end of the stick with that.”

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Now, Johnson is asking questions about how these construction projects can be better co-ordinated and how to ensure residents are notified of when construction might impact their trips across the city.

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“I can’t imagine in this day and age that there isn’t a technology solution for it,” she said.

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As it turns out, the idea of better co-ordination isn’t new, and has been on the city’s radar since it was amalgamated in 2001. As the dozen municipalities merged to form the City of Ottawa, consultants were brought on to investigate how different city projects could talk to each other.