Technical Advisory Services for Toronto’s Largest Transit Project

The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area is the fastest growing metro area in North America, and expanding the transit system is essential to connect people to jobs, schools and their communities. Recognizing this pressing need, Metrolinx is planning and building a new rapid transit line — the Ontario Line. This nearly 16-kilometer subway line, with 15 proposed stations, will run from Ontario Place/Exhibition Place through downtown Toronto to the Ontario Science Centre.

HDR serves as the technical advisor for the Ontario Line. As technical advisor, HDR and its primary partners — Mott MacDonald, Stantec, Systra and Comtech — provide a wide range of planning, engineering, environmental, design, construction oversight, and commissioning services. This program also provides a significant opportunity to integrate technological tools such as BIM, GIS, 5D modeling and reality mesh visualizations.

Reaching New Neighborhoods

Expected to accommodate nearly 400,000 daily boardings, the Ontario Line will provide relief and reduce crowding on TTC’s Line 1 (Yonge-University), serve fast-growing areas such as Liberty Village, and bring transit to dense, underserviced neighborhoods like Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park. The line will also provide transfer points to other rail transit systems including Go Transit commuter rail at two stations (east and west of the main Union Station) and the TTC subway system. When complete, 255,000 more people will be within walking distance of rapid transit. Nearly 50,000 more jobs will be accessible by transit (in 45 minutes or less) for Toronto residents.

The new line will be a mix of at-grade track, elevated guideways and underground tunnels. By mixing these options, the line will bring more rapid transit to more communities sooner. The development of the Ontario Line is also working in partnership with the development of transit oriented communities (TOC) at 24 sites near 11 stations. TOCs account for approximately 5% of provincial housing target of 285,000 homes in the next 10 years. 

Project Controls on a Massive Scale

Our advanced and integrated project controls services have been a significant contributor to project success. These services include parametric estimating, class 3 and 4 estimating, critical path method (CPM) scheduling, linear schedule, document control, cost control, change management, dashboard development, progress reporting and development of the program’s central project management information system. 

On such a large project, the scale of the effort can be seen in its numbers. At peak usage, the reporting system included over 1,200 consultant users and over 100 Metrolinx users. Document control included organizing access and permission for over 50 different companies, while maintaining revision control for over 100,000 documents. And the master program schedule coordinated by our scheduling team includes over 200,000 schedule activities. 

Managing Multibillion-Dollar Packages

Since beginning work in early 2020, the HDR team has led the effort to perform specification development and create reference concept drawings for two P3 contracts worth over CA$12 billion in construction and for a CA$3 billion 30 year O&M agreement. HDR has also contributed to project delivery on:  

• Two progressive design-build contracts
• Two design-bid-build contracts where HDR completed final design, permitting and procurement support and is now serving as engineering of record  
• 20 advance works contracts across the alignment with both design-build and engineer of record support