Construction Coordination in the City

Toronto is experiencing significant growth and development related to commercial and residential building developments, expanding transit and providing the necessary infrastructure updates to support this growth. The volume of construction work—both for public works and private development impacting the City’s road network — requires careful coordination to minimize disruptive impacts while still supporting our city’s growth and maintenance.

The City’s capital construction coordination and planning process reviews projects before work takes place on the street. This construction coordination effort aims to:

  • reduce neighborhood impacts (scale and duration),
  • give the City the ability to better communicate construction schedules to the public,
  • give the City the ability to stick to these schedules; and
  • combine projects to avoid reconstruction

The Strategic Capital Coordination Office (SCCO) leads the capital coordination between all internal and external partners that have a role in construction of infrastructure impacting City rights-of-ways. The SCCO is the liaison between city divisions, agencies, corporations and utilities to enhance capital coordination that includes the integration of a longer-term portfolio-wide view with the current capital coordination process.

There are two key units within the SCCO leading the construction planning and coordination efforts:

Strategic Coordination Unit (SCU)

The Strategic Coordination Unit (SCU) provides enhanced long term planning support for specific areas of the city experiencing significant growth and with complex infrastructure needs.  To meet the complex needs of stakeholders in these areas, the SCU’s objectives are to streamline processes, enhance oversight and drive capital program accountability over the full plan/design/build lifecycle of the infrastructure improvements that support specific growth areas.

Capital Delivery Coordination (CDC)

Capital Delivery Coordination (CDC) is a unit within the Strategic Capital Coordination Office responsible for developing and maintaining a coordinated capital plan identifying the scope of public and private work intended for each construction year. Three to five years in advance of a construction season, CDC considers all submitted public and private stakeholder projects planned for that period, resolves conflicts between these projects, and develops a single city-wide annual coordinated capital program.

CDC works with public and private agencies to ensure that works impacting City rights-of-ways are coordinated and that all stakeholders are aware of what other organizations are doing. This coordination often enables construction by different groups to be bundled together, thereby avoiding a situation where another project starts not long after construction on an earlier project has been completed on the same street (further disrupting traffic and potentially cutting into fresh pavement).

 

If you have a question or comment about the Strategic Capital Coordination Office or units within it, please contact us at icu@toronto.ca.

 

The Toronto Public Utilities Coordinating Committee (TPUCC) is a consortium established by the City of Toronto and partnering utility companies.

The goal of the organization is to provide a forum to table ideas for discussion and encourage safety during construction projects. In addition, the TPUCC is committed to implementing innovative ways of reducing the impact of construction in subdivisions and main routes in order to keep traffic moving as well as reduce the inconvenience to homeowners.

Members

  • Beanfield
  • Bell Canada
  • CIK Telecom Inc.
  • City of Toronto
  • Enbridge Gas Distribution
  • Enwave Energy Corporation
  • Fibrenoire
  • Hydro One Networks Inc.
  • Rogers Cable Communications Inc.
  • Shared Fibre Inc.
  • Telus
  • Toronto Hydro
  • Toronto Transit Commission (TTC)
  • Zayo

Circulation

Appendix B – Utility Contacts for Permit Process and Mark-Up

A few of the strategies the City uses to reduce the impact of construction on our road network include, but are not limited to:

  • Avoiding simultaneous construction on key parallel route (e.g. working on parallel commuter routes such as Bayview Avenue and Mt Pleasant Road in the same block at the same time).
  • Limiting projects impacting traffic flow around the same intersection (e.g. conducting north-south work on Yonge Street and east-west work on Finch Avenue, with both projects converging at Yonge / Finch).
  • The City endeavours to avoid scheduling two projects generating broader-area impacts in close proximity to each other.
  • Identifying opportunities to reschedule projects for improved efficiencies and to avoid conflicts.
  • Bundling proposed projects to have the work completed as part of one contract.

If you have a question or comment about these strategies, please contact us at icu@toronto.ca.