The man who was tagged with strategically overseeing Hamilton’s now-defunct LRT says bidders wavering on engaging in such a large multi-national project is “not unusual.”

Project Director, Kris Jacobsen, says news about bidders pulling back in the process — as revealed in a Toronto Star article on Monday night about a risk-assessment update — is not uncommon.

“They’re complex,” Jacobson told Global News. “If you take a look at the consortiums that are put together to actually bid on these projects are made of a number of different firms, multinational firms, multidisciplinary firms could have, you know, anywhere from three to five major partners.

“So to have bidders at various stages through the procurement either be more active or less active or have partners that are actually getting swapped out and changed with other partners is not uncommon.”

Jacobson says Metrolinx never gave him any indications that they potentially were pulling out of the city’s LRT project — which was inevitably announced on Dec. 16, 2020 — due to problems with the procurement.

“That was never an indication that that was given to us by Metrolinx. And quite frankly, again, on these types of projects, having partners that are either more engaged or less engaged or going through a process of swapping out partners for new partners is very common,” said Jacobson.

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