MAJOR PROJECT OVERVIEW:
New Champlain Bridge Corridor ACHIEVEMENT OF FINANCIAL CLOSE The Champlain Bridge over the St. Lawrence River links the City of Brossard on the South Shore, to the City of Montréal’s Verdun borough. It is one of the busiest crossings in Canada, used annually by over 40 million vehicles. An important component of the Continental Gateway corridor, the bridge also facilitates the transit of close to $20 billion of trade every year. The Champlain Bridge is the most important component of a highway corridor between downtown Montréal and the South Shore and is part of the New Champlain Bridge Corridor (NCBC) which will cost approximately $4.2 billion and include: • New Champlain Bridge (NCB): 6 lanes, 3.4 km long bridge linking Nuns’ Island to Brossard on the South Shore; • New Nuns’ Island Bridge: 6 lanes, 468 m long bridge linking the Island of Montréal to Nuns’ Island; and • Highway 15: 6 lanes, 3 km long highway linking the Nuns’ Island Bridge to the Quebec Ministry of Transport’s Turcot Interchange. With a proposed lifespan of 125 years, and given its strategic location in Montréal and its key role in the regional economy, the NCB will represent a significant federal legacy
in the region and will contribute to the economic prosperity of the neighboring communities, the City of Montréal and Canada as a whole. The Montreal Infrastructure and Project Finance practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP led a consortium consisting of Steer Davies Gleave and Arup to provide technical and financial advice to Infrastructure Canada as follows: • Traffic and revenue forecasting for the tolling portion of the bridge; • Identifying the preferred technical solution for the NCBC (e.g. lane configuration, bridge design, traffic mitigation, bridge demolition solution, public transit solution and integration, etc.) and the related project costs; • Input to project planning and development of a business case; • Determining value for money to Canada; • Assessment of the Canadian market funding capacity for a project of the size of the NCBC; • Conducting risk analysis in order to determine the level of risk shared between the public and private sectors; • Conduct a market sounding to determine the market appetite for the project structure, procurement model and bankability of the envisioned solution;
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• Assistance on the integration of architectural considerations to the most important gateway to a major Canadian city; • Providing assistance in the drafting of the procurement documentation (Request for Qualification (RFQ), Request for proposals (RFP), project agreement (PA), payment mechanism); • Financial evaluation of RFQ and RFP submissions; • Assistance through financial close. The project is currently under construction and the major project milestones were as follows: • March 2014: RFQ launch; • May to June 2014: RFQ evaluation and selection of three proponents; • July 2014: RFP launch; • August 2014 to January 2015: RFP bid preparation, including nine bilateral confidential commercial meetings and three rounds of proponent comments on the draft PA that will govern the Public-Private-Partnership; • January 2015: Issuance of the final version of the PA; • February 2015: RFP technical submission; • April 2015: RFP financial submission and announcement of preferred proponent; • June 19, 2015: financial close.
