Abstract Manager

Canada is delivering some of the most expensive transit projects in the world. While public sector owners and transit agencies have strong capabilities in planning, design, and construction, outcomes are increasingly constrained by a more fundamental issue: how costs are tracked, compared, and understood across projects.

Today, billions of dollars are spent on transit capital programs without a common language for where that money goes. Cost data is often captured at highly rolled-up levels, tracked inconsistently across agencies, and difficult to compare even within the same organization. As a result, owners are left asking basic but critical questions too late in the process: What is actually driving costs? How do our projects compare? And what could have been done differently?

This session makes the case that standardized cost tracking is a necessary first step toward better cost management.

Participants will explore:

· Why inconsistent cost definitions undermine benchmarking, shared learning, and public confidence.

· How a standardized cost tracking and reporting template can improve visibility into cost pressures early — before design and procurement decisions lock them in.

· Practical, incremental approaches to implementation that respect commercial sensitivity while still delivering value

Standardizing cost tracking is not a glamorous reform, nor will it solve every challenge facing transit delivery. But it is a foundational enabler — supporting better scoping, stronger governance, more informed decision-making, and clearer accountability for outcomes.

For owners seeking to move from reactive cost control to proactive cost management, this session focuses on a simple but powerful question: Are we set up to learn from the billions we are already spending?