Appendix B: Background, Scope and Objectives

Background

We conducted aThe Value for Money (VFM) /Performance Audit of purchased services related to winter road clearing based on the risks identified through 2019-2020 City of Windsor Internal Audit Risk Assessment and Plan approved by the Corporate Services Standing Committee on May 6, 2019. This was a value enhancement audit where the Internal Audit (IA) addressed risks including: Materials/ Contractor availability, Third Party and Contract management, Inadequate governance structures/Operating Models, Project management, Asset Planning.

Scope

The scope of this internal audit included an assessment of the performance measures as attained by management and the controls in effect related to winter road clearing for the period from Fall (November 1) 2017 to Winter (April 30) 2019.

Performance objectives

• Aggregate certificates: Aggregate payments certificates were issued with no more than a 2% aggregated variance for all certificates tested.
• Individual certificates : Individual payment certificates were issued with no more than a 5% variance for all certificates tested.
• Contractor trucks on route: 100% of contractor trucks were on the assigned routes during a winter event.
• Breaks : 100% of contractor operators completed one cycle of their assigned routes before taking a 30 minute work break or were in conformance with other applicable legislative requirements.
• Contractor equipment breakdowns: Contractor equipment breakdowns during one day in a given winter event did not exceed a total of 5 hours per truck.
• Tardiness : Late show hours during any winter event for a contractor route did not exceed total of one (1) hour.
• No-show performance : 100% of contractor no-shows were captured and communicated back to the Contractor for remediation and considered in vendor performance evaluation.

Internal audit objectives

Internal audit conducted procedures to determine if:

• The City has spent money on road clearing with due regard for economy and efficiency and has satisfactory procedures for measuring and reporting on the effectiveness of contractor performance.
• The City has clearly established contractors performance objectives for road clearing/maintenance and the objectives were based on reasonable, researched and approved factors.
• The City has monitoring and reporting mechanisms in place to determine if the performance objectives are being attained and meeting its intended results.
• When the intended results of the road clearing were not being met, The City has taken actions to remediate.