Ask Toronto, Montreal, or Metro Vancouver’s transit authorities what’s actually delaying their projects right now, and the answer isn’t design complexity or supply chains, it’s process. All three have said publicly that lengthy federal review and funding application timelines are increasing costs and delaying construction starts on projects that are otherwise ready to move. They’ve also pointed out the compounding effect: the longer a project waits for funding confirmation, the more “inflationary cost creep” it absorbs before project breaks ground.
| That’s a hard risk to manage if a design only gets construction-ready after funding lands, because it means the schedule clock effectively doesn’t start until the slowest, least predictable part of the process, the funding decision, is finished. The projects handling this well are doing the opposite: keeping designs at a genuinely construction-ready state ahead of funding confirmation, so the moment money is approved, procurement and construction can start immediately instead of waiting for another 12 to 18 months of detailed design. |
Delivery model matters here too. Canada introduced a new standard progressive design-build contract, the CCDC 32, in 2026, a model built specifically for schedule certainty, where a contractor is brought on during design rather than after, so design, procurement, and early construction activities can overlap instead of running strictly in sequence. For agencies facing funding timelines they don’t control, that overlap is one of the few schedule levers their control.
On the road and corridor side, this is where having design work carried through in tools built for fast, accurate iteration, geometric corridor design in Civil3D, construction-ready drawing packages, tender documentation, pays off directly. A project that’s genuinely shelf-ready when funding arrives can recover months of schedule that a project starting from a conceptual design simply can’t. If your capital program has projects sitting between concept and construction-ready, closing that gap now before the next funding call, is one of the more reliable ways to protect a schedule you don’t fully control.
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“In a changing climate and economy, resilient infrastructure is about fit for purpose engineering solutions tailored for now and tomorrow.”
Jesse Unke, P.ENG., PE, PMP, RMP, CMC
Vice President, Transportation & Infrastructure
jesse.unke@priengineering.com