To meet its most recent delivery targets, Bombardier will need to deliver as many cars to Toronto in the next eight months as it has in the past six years combined. And if it succeeds, it will need to deliver almost twice as many next year as it did this year to stay on track. The questions are obvious: And how exactly has this gone so wrong for so long? When the TTC signed this contract, it was not supposed to be a risky proposition. For nearly two decades, Bombardier has produced similar new-era, low-floor streetcars in Europe from its plant in Bautzen, Germany, with few detectable problems.
Bombardier now boasts it is the most popular light rail vehicle in the world. And yet, at its plants in Thunder Bay, Ont. While Bombardier has admitted the company had issues producing the streetcars, it would not respond to many questions about the details of production problems. The company maintains it will meet the final deadline for delivering all the cars.
As a result, the newest revised schedule is by necessity more compressed than ever. New Bombardier Transportation President Benoit Brossoit told the Star in an interview that the company has invested and made changes to meet the newest revised schedule the fifth schedule since the contract was signed. Changes to the supply chain, welding processes and investments in production capability will begin paying off shortly, he said.
Bombardier won the case, at least temporarily, after the judge ordered both sides to go before a dispute-resolution board. The biggest test is ahead, as the deliveries need to ramp up drastically over the summer and fall of this year. It seems possible they have finally figured out how to right the ship. In a nod to the past, the sleek vehicles burst through a banner with a photo of a vintage Toronto PCC car, first introduced eight decades ago. There was a barbershop quartet. Politicians, including federal and provincial ministers, attended the launch.
Bombardier had long-ago blown past its initial promise to have seven cars in service by the end of For months, the TTC had been planning a bigger rollout and Bombardier had assured there would be five or six new cars for the launch. Then, a little more than a week before the launch, Byford sent a memo telling staff to focus only on readying two cars for the ceremony. TTC officials had been seeing problems with the first three prototypes for years. Many of their concerns emerge in internal emails obtained by the Star through a freedom-of-information request.
It has big windows and is better than the old one. I do like it. All three prototypes were supposed to have been delivered by late but the first car arrived nearly a year late in September Each needed major retrofitting. Many factors combined to cause these initial delays, say several people with knowledge of the order. After all, this is a complicated car, with some 10, parts. Internal emails and interviews make clear, however, that some of the problems were not being addressed and fixed. Components of the car were being produced at different sizes from what drawings specified.
When assembled, the steel sidewalls were not flat, leaving gaps with mating parts.
The parts needed extra attention when put together. And there were also design hurdles. For example, even though Bombardier had provided three internal layout options to choose from, the company told the TTC that its choice would take longer and cost more. Mexico plant had problems welding and tooling steel sidewalls and undercarriages within the tolerance needed for assembly in Thunder Bay.
The end plates at the opening of the car body segments were peeling apart and had to be repaired on the first vehicles, then redesigned for the rest of the order. Bombardier said the seating arrangement the TTC chose would take longer to pull off and cost more, despite offering the layout as one option of three. The European style bogie paint needed to be changed to a more rugged corrosion-resistant type, causing a small delay. Engineers had to go back and hand-check more than 5, pins per car. Smoothing the transition required redesign of both the ramp and streetcar floor. The locker would have to be redesigned, including wire harnesses that ran through the cab.
The wheelchair ramp, designed by French company Faively, played a particularly large role in the delays. Deployed from the second door of each car, it is housed inside the floor. The design allows the ramp to be deployed at two different lengths — shorter to reach streetcar platform level on Spadina Ave. The transition from the ramp to the car floor at the door was uneven.
The initial design made exiting the car feel more like thrill ride. This would not be simple. After testing, the first prototype car was sent back to Thunder Bay in the fall of to be modified. The TTC kept the second and third prototypes, despite their flaws, because they needed to train drivers.
In late spring , Bombardier officials were assuring the TTC that, even with the threat of a strike in Thunder Bay, they would deliver six streetcars, ready for service, for launch day. TTC officials were skeptical. By August, with Thunder Bay factory workers on strike, it was clear they would only have two cars ready — the now retrofitted first prototype car and the first non-prototype, production car While the strike impacted delays, the internal TTC emails suggest quality issues played an even larger role.
The entire section of the car needed to be scrapped. Doing the math, Lam added that in order for the company to deliver its th car by mid Bombardier would have to accelerate production to one car per week. The Thunder Bay plant has consistently failed to establish an efficient assembly line, requiring workers to basically build each car by hand because of missing and out-of-tolerance parts.
Production was at a standstill. Not a single streetcar had left the plant in more than six months. The two facilities were also building an order for Metrolinx light rail vehicles, which are similar to the TTC streetcar. Metrolinx had filed notice, saying that Bombardier had defaulted because the pilot was two years behind schedule.
Documents filed this year as part of the lawsuit brought against Metrolinx show that Metrolinx had expressed concern about its order for light rail vehicles for more than two years — concerns that echo those the TTC had expressed since The government agency Metrolinx ordered light rail vehicles from Bombardier back in , and the Region of Waterloo hopped on the contract to order 14 of their own, pictured, for the new ION line.
Thousands of hours of computer-assisted design in Germany were supposed to allow Bombardier producers in Europe, North America and Asia to fabricate parts that would snap together like Lego. A type of nut that could have corroded was mistakenly used and had to be replaced. The end plates on the opening of the car body de-laminated or peeled apart. One baffling problem the TTC grappled with in the summer of was intermittent electrical problems on the cars. Some of the electrical pins that connected the wires to the car were loose.
Fixing this was a huge headache, requiring thousands of connections to be checked per car. To correct the problem, Bombardier sent the supplier to Mexico and Thunder Bay to learn how to properly connect the wires. For production to hum, everything has to come together smoothly in a complex global ballet of container ships, tractor trailers and waybills. Otherwise part delays can trigger serious production problems, not only by causing delays but by forcing work to be done out of sequence which can lead to mistakes.
We want to collaborate with those just as much as we do with the mom-and-pop supply chain that are here in the Ontario base. More than 70 per cent of all passenger rail vehicles in Mexico were made at the 2,employee plant, which has also built tram and train parts for Kuala Lumpur, New York City and Minneapolis.
Emotional Intelligence A mini-blog article from a retired TWA Captain discussing the benefits of emotional intelligence and understanding how it can make you a safer and more understanding pilot. East Dane Designer Men's Fashion. Aggressive expansion of European footprint peaks with acquisition of German railcar manufacturer Adtranz in Bombardier won the case, at least temporarily, after the judge ordered both sides to go before a dispute-resolution board. How many incidents or accidents have occurred due to poor communications? Which is good news for riders who made
But, according to one source, they left too soon. Any training was set back by the high turnover rate in Mexico, where skilled welders would leave to take higher-paying jobs — a situation that would persist until the end of In Thunder Bay, some workers resented having to work with parts manufactured in Mexico, parts they could have been making themselves. The new LRV streetcar contract is now completely fabricated in Mexico and only assembled here in Ontario. The three new Flexity cars continued unscathed — but there should have been at least 10 times as many on the streets by then.
A cold snap hit Toronto in January Others broke down in the middle of the street, blocking the streetcars behind them and stranding passengers in plunging temperatures.
Throughout the deep freeze, the new Bombardier streetcars ran without incident on the Spadina line. But there were only three of them. At the start of the year, Bombardier had delivered less than one tenth the number of vehicles it was supposed to. In the coming months the problems that plagued the initial car builds would persist and multiply, prompting a fed-up TTC to sue the company for millions in damages.
The two sides are still negotiating. In May , the next car in line was held back after it leaked during a water test, suffered electrical control problems, and a door panel had to be replaced.
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They kept chasing false solutions. Bombardier keeps pushing back the delivery schedule while asserting it will still meet the due date, now promising what some say is an impossible build rate. Click the arrows to see more. And then he jumped on a plane. Byford wanted to see the shop floor for himself. He also wanted Bombardier to know that its customer was not happy.
The TTC was supposed to have 50 new streetcars. It had six in service. Have you got enough tools? Do you understand the time frames that we need these streetcars? After a presentation from Bombardier engineers, Byford and Colle felt reassured that the company understood the gravity of the delays. It had undergone a managerial transformation and was committed to catching errors on the production line early. Plus, Bombardier pledged to ramp up and build four vehicles a month. Byford returned feeling more confident, but two days later, Bombardier revised the schedule downwards.
But he said changes had been made. Now there is a notable improvement. Six months later, Allen was gone and his replacement, Francois Minville, admitted the problems were not solved. He delivered this message to Metrolinx during an April 21, , meeting. He was soon replaced by Francois Minville bottom , who pointed to a lack of strong manufacturing processes in both Sahagun and Thunder Bay. It was a remarkable admission. The delivery schedule had been adjusted downward again, but the TTC no longer believed Bombardier could meet even its revised targets. TTC board members voted to pursue damages against Bombardier.
Most had to be scrapped. We have been told about revised manufacturing practices, improved. When the Toronto contract was signed in , Bombardier had built more than of the low-floor Flexity light rail vehicles LRVs for transit systems around the world, and it had never run into the problems that were turning up in Canada. When the bids were submitted by Siemens and Bombardier, Bombardier came in at a shocking two-thirds the price of the competition. David Miller, mayor at the time, recalls it differently. As to whether Siemens was high or Bombardier was low, he said the specifics are hard to be exact about after eight years.
These guys knew Henry pretty well. They knew he was a loner, never been on a date, and spent way too much time alone. So, they circled up and started talking amongst themselves. The following list of typical pilot traits was compiled from a ALPA Airline Pilots Association study that I shortened to prevent the onset of depression! These traits just might contribute to our not often being known as social butterflies. But read on beyond this list; we do have many redeeming qualities! When we do experience unwanted feelings, we tend to mask them, sometimes with humor or even anger.
Being unemotional helps us deal with crises, but can make us insensitive toward the feelings of others. Our spouses and children frequently complain that we have difficulty expressing complex human emotions toward them. This emotional "block" can create difficulty communicating. How many incidents or accidents have occurred due to poor communications? The vast majority of Professional standards cases are caused by poor communication. With these kinds of traits, we do not rank that high on the Emotional Intelligence EQ scale!
Airline and corporate pilot hiring departments actively look for these personality traits, and more, in the pilots they recruit. The term was made popular by Daniel Goleman in his book of the same name. He defines Emotional Intelligence as the ability to recognize, understand and manage our own emotions as well as recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others. In practical terms, this means being aware that emotions can drive our behavior and impact people positively and negatively , and learning how to manage those emotions — both our own and others — especially when we are under pressure.
We all know people who are in full control of their emotions. They're calm in a crisis, and they make decisions sensitively, however stressful the situation. I think we would all agree that Captain Sully comes to mind here. Some people can even read the emotions of others. They understand what to say to make people feel better, and they know how to inspire them to take action. People like this have a high EQ.
For example, one of my new hire pilot friends at TWA had a photographic memory. He studied very little but maxed the frequent exams that we had in B systems ground school. I mistakenly thought I could keep up with his extracurricular activities, going out and partying every night, and maintain a similar grade.
It only took me a couple of weeks to figure out, after partying with him and watching my weekly exam scores plummet, that no way was I going to be able to keep up with him and continue my flying career. One of the pilots I met and interviewed for an article at Oshkosh was Dr. I discovered that those fast reactions with short concise communications do not work well in meetings or when listening to people.
Your article on emotional IQ is good and perhaps the above thoughts might help you give even more examples from a veteran who has learned the hard way. Situational awareness has been an aviation buzz word for some time. Some pilots are better disposed to good situational awareness than others. For example, different personality types have different emotional qualities. My predominant emotion is fear. But this makes me highly attuned to situations and people around me. Consequently, I have good situational awareness.
I always felt like I would have made a good cop; able to sniff out possible suspects, etc. These are some very simple tips that I have practiced for years and have found helpful. Now they come naturally, most of the time. These might help to increase your EQ and make your life and flying career much more enjoyable. Introduce yourself to others first rather than waiting for them to do so. This also gives you the advantage of getting their first name.