CASE STUDIES
Quebec City Tramway, Systems Integration Contract
Strategic Co-Development for Québec Connexion Capitale/ Quebec Connexion Capitale (QCC)
THE PROJECT
The Quebec City Tramway is one of the most significant urban transit investments in Quebec's history, a major surface tramway system procured by CDPQ Infra. The systems integration contract covers the full technical and commercial integration of the tramway's systems: signalling, train control, platform operations, digital tools, and the interfaces between them.
QCC, a major consortium formed specifically for this pursuit, competed for the systems integration mandate. We worked alongside their team throughout the bid.
THE CHALLENGE
A systems integration bid is a different kind of complexity. The technical scope spans multiple disciplines, each with its own specialists and its own language. The consortium brought deep expertise across every domain. The challenge was producing a submission where all of that expertise reads as one coherent offer, in French, to a sophisticated owner who knows what good looks like.
The pursuit also involved live interactive workshops with CDPQ Infra and the client, where the consortium's team presented their approach and responded in real time. Technical strength mattered. So did how the team showed up.
WHAT WE DID
We embedded with the consortium's pursuit team as strategic co-development partners across narrative integration.
On the submission itself, we worked across the technical sections throughout the drafting process: reviewing working group outputs, supporting the systems integration narrative, and coordinating across the consortium's technical leads to align messaging and close the gaps between sections. We ran pink, red, and gold team reviews, managed successive rounds of comments, and pushed the document toward one coherent voice across many authors.
We worked in French throughout, including all technical section reviews, workshop preparation, and coaching sessions.
THE OUTCOME
The consortium was selected as the preferred proponent for the systems integration contract.
The technical submission was strengthened across working groups covering signalling, train control, platform systems, estimation, and systems integration governance. Messaging was aligned across the consortium's two primary technical partners. The team was prepared and confident going into the live client workshops.