Report: Metro capital project delays continue

A new report from the King County Auditor’s Office found that King County Metro continues to struggle with meeting deadlines on capital projects, often overpromising and risking increased budgets down the road.

The audit, presented July 18 before the King County Council’s Transportation, Economy and Environment Committee, focused on analyzing Metro’s large capital projects — buildings and infrastructure projects over $1 million — from 2016 to 2022. The findings come as Metro looks to electrify its fleet and expand its RapidRide system, work that could be held up if Metro continues to miss deadlines.

“Metro Transit’s ability to put transportation infrastructure in place is directly linked to the effectiveness of the County’s transit system and its impact on the environment,” said Kymber Waltmunson, King County Auditor. “We are encouraged that Metro Transit has agreed to implement all of our recommendations.”

Auditors did note that Metro leadership and staff are aware of issues and have been making improvements to try to bring projects in on time and on budget, but gaps continue to turn up.

Key findings include:

• Metro Transit has steadily grown its capital program and increased spending. Nonetheless, spending has not kept pace with forecasts, and Metro Transit has fallen short of its projected biennium spending on fixed asset capital projects by at least 33% since 2017.

• Available data shows this lag in spending is because Metro Transit completes projects later than planned.

• Delays in capital projects hinder Metro Transit’s ability to meet its long-range plans (e.g., Metro Connects and the transition to a zero-emissions fleet) and its ability to meet existing service levels. Delays can also lead to higher project costs because of inflation.

• Metro Transit leadership is aware of the issues and has implemented new initiatives to improve its capital planning and delivery processes since Metro Transit transitioned to a department in 2019.

• These initiatives have helped Metro Transit improve oversight of projects, but gaps in continuous improvement practices, reliable data, and communication with staff hinder the effectiveness of new initiatives and Metro Transit’s ability to improve performance.

• Additional gaps in specific areas of operations include the lack of estimation standards, not aligning project planning with internal staff capacity, not yet tailoring processes to the variety of Metro Transit’s capital projects, and the lack of a process to collect and review past lessons learned to identify and mitigate repeat issues.

The audit made 19 recommendations, including:

• Metro Transit should develop, document, and implement management accountability processes to support implementation of continuous improvement initiatives.

• Metro Transit should develop, document, and implement a change management plan that ensures communication between staff and management, improves communication within and between operation groups, and creates forums for staff to ask questions and provide feedback.

• Metro Transit should align future Capital Improvement Programs and program timelines with assessments of staff capacity.

• Metro Transit should develop standardized guidance for creating capital project budget and schedule estimates from Capital Improvement Plan preparation through project baseline.

• Metro Transit should develop, document, and implement processes to ensure all Capital Division staff understand and practice guidance on roles and responsibilities for decision-making and escalation of project issues.

• Metro Transit should develop, document, and implement mechanisms for management to review lessons learned to identify potential division- or agency-level improvements that could help address common issues on capital projects.