Running 11 kilometres from Keele Street to Highway 27 before travelling south to Humber College, the Finch West Light Rail Transit (LRT) line in northwest Toronto includes 18 stops and multiple connections. Black & McDonald has been invested in bringing this project to life since November 2019, when the MTO division started off as a utility subcontractor to Mosaic Transit Group. At its peak, the B&M team consisted of a project manager, four coordinators and a field staff of around 40 who were responsible for permanent traffic and street lighting, permanent traffic signals, fibre work and some TSP commissioning.
“The majority of our construction work is now complete,” says Mark Dmytraszko, Department Manager, Streetlights & Asset Management. “We’ve wrapped up a lot of our inspections and we’re starting to commission the traffic signals and signalling for the trains. We’re also closing out all our street lighting packages to send to Toronto Hydro.”
Though the project is approaching completion, there has been no shortage of challenges along the way, with space limitations and the need for heavy pedestrian coordination encroaching on the team’s ability to work freely. Work zones needed to be clearly delineated from pedestrian zones, requiring considerable resources and attention to safety before the team could proceed from location to location. Then, in 2020, along came COVID. With no preparation or experience working through a global pandemic, the B&M team needed to shift gears quickly to incorporate the necessary safety measures.
“We had to keep working through that challenging time,” Dmytraszko says. “There were a lot of hiccups, and a lot of people getting COVID—including me. We had to structure the work in a way to keep people safe, while also completing our obligations to the clients and to Metrolinx.”
Not long after the lockdowns, supply chain issues presented themselves, creating more complications and delays that could have been much more problematic.
“We were having trouble getting things like copper, aluminum, and polyvinyl chloride pipe, on top of which the prices were doubling and tripling,” he says. “We were working tirelessly trying to understand how to claim some of the money or make it up in other ways.”
More recently, the team has faced other pressures—including the need to adhere to a very condensed schedule in 2023. The good news is, despite numerous issues challenging the Finch West LRT’s progress, B&M has come through on all fronts, meeting its deliverables without any delays.
“I want to give a lot of credit to our operations team and field staff, who worked tirelessly through stressful conditions, often overnight and on weekends when needed, to make this job a success for Black & McDonald. It truly highlights our ability to overcome major hurdles and deliver high-quality work safely and on schedule, with pride and professionalism.”
Learn more: BM_News_Winter_2024_EN.pdf