ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[jamincan]

502 only needed Grandlinq's work to be able to test it. the only vehicle that needs Bombardier to work on it more is 501. They haven't shipped us any incomplete vehicles since 501. The work that region has asked Bombardier to do on the completed vehicles there is to make the modifications (that Bombardier been making to perfect the overall design and process) to the completed ones in addition to the ones being built. This is so that there is a unified approach to maintaining the vehicles rather than minor differences between the individual vehicles. None of this would even be needed if the Sheppard East LRT wasn't shelved by Rob Ford because the changes would have been made already during the production run of the vehicles for Sheppard East. We have now become the launch customer which means we get the lovely benefit (if you can call it that) of being the guinea pigs.

Given that 503/504 still need more work to make them the same as the later vehicles I'd consider that incomplete, until then they're basically beta units. Functional beta units, but still beta (and therefore incomplete). I certainly agree that if the TTC hadn't cancelled Transit City then they'd have been the beta customer, and we wouldn't be, but that doesn't excuse Bombardier's delay. Timelines for delivery are supposed to include the beta testing phase.

At my work if we tell a customer we're delivering their product by X date and we only have a beta on X date, we don't get to say we met our timeline, even if the beta does most of what the customer wants.

Just because an item was delivered prior to an update doesn't mean it is incomplete, it simply means it is an earlier version. If Grandlinq knows that a so-called Flexity v1.1 is about to be released, it makes sense to ask the manufacturer to delay delivery so that Grandlinq receives the latest updates to the vehicle. Nevertheless, Flexity v1.0 is still a perfectly functional and complete vehicle.