Construction giant sues Metro Vancouver for $250 million over North Shore sewage plant


Company argues that delays and cost overruns were due largely to a poor site and flaws in Metro Vancouver’s own design.

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Spanish construction company Acciona is suing Metro Vancouver for $250 million, alleging Metro wrongfully terminated its contract to build its North Shore wastewater treatment plant.

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Acciona filed a lawsuit in BC Supreme Court on Thursday.

The project was beset by problems that started with Metro’s selection of a too-small site subject to multiple hazards and errors in design requiring thousands of alterations that ballooned the budget to over $1 billion, the company argues in its notice of claim.

Metro Vancouver very publicly fired Acciona from the project last October, declaring its design-build contractor “underperformed and consistently failed to meet its contractual obligations,” including on-time delivery for a facility that, at that point, was 2½ years behind schedule.

In January, the regional district formally terminated its contract with Acciona for what started as a $504-million project to be finished in 2021. Recently, Metro hired PCL Constructors Westcoast to devise a plan for getting construction back on track by September.

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The detailed 98-page claim filed by Acciona, however, outlines the company’s version of what was happening behind the scenes of numerous delays and cost-overruns that at blamed mostly on Metro Vancouver’s own design flaws and failure to approve necessary changes in a timely manner. .

The allegations have not been proven in court and Metro Vancouver has not filed a response.

At the time last fall that Metro Vancouver said Acciona’s subsidiary, Acciona Wastewater Solutions LP had appeared to have abandoned the project, the company said it was participating in “good-faith” discussions to resolve issues with the project on a new estimated timeline for completion in 2025.

It alleged that, by mid-2021, it was clear to Acciona that the project was impossible to build the project the way Metro wanted it on the selected site.

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The company argues that significant changes would be required due to the “discovery of rampant errors and conflicts,” in the design and construction specifications that weren’t foreseen when the construction agreement was signed in 2017.

Acciona advised Metro Vancouver that it would be impossible to meet all the requirements in the project agreement, but the regional district still demanded the company meet a Sept. 19, 2023 completion date, according to the lawsuit, then “purported to terminate the project agreement.”

Metro Vancouver’s “termination of the (contract) was wrongful and Accciona seeks recovery of all of its losses flowing from such wrongful termination,” the company said in its claim.

It estimates damages of at least $250 million including a $100-million milestone payment for work already performed that Metro Vancouver withheld last fall, $50 million secured from Acciona’s design-build security as well as other damages.

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