Judge orders Atkins Realis to release $703,000 in holdback payments to local contractor

Superior Court Justice Karen Perron issued summary judgment ordering Atkins Realis Construction to release $703,000 in holdback funds to Bradley-Kelly Construction Ltd., settling a payment dispute tied to the Trillium Line expansion.

Bradley-Kelly, a sub-subcontractor that provided roadway lighting and traffic signal infrastructure for the Earl Armstrong Road widening, filed two liens in February 2024 after work was completed. The dispute centered on whether work at Earl Armstrong Road and New Walkley Yard constituted a single improvement or multiple separate ones — a distinction that determined whether Bradley-Kelly's lien was preserved within the statutory 45-day window.

Bradley-Kelly completed work at Earl Armstrong on Dec. 27, 2023, and at New Walkley Yard on Jan. 25, 2024. Atkins Realis argued the Earl Armstrong lien expired Feb. 13, 2024, since Bradley-Kelly preserved it on Feb. 15. The judge disagreed. "The work done by Bradley-Kelly at the two sites was work done on the same, single improvement," Justice Perron wrote. "The Earl Armstrong lien was therefore preserved and perfected on time."

Atkins Realis had already paid $615,000 of holdback funds for the New Walkley Yard lien. The ruling requires release of the remaining $703,000 for Earl Armstrong.

Atkins Realis (formerly SNC-Lavalin) was the general contractor through its subsidiary TransitNext on the Trillium Line extension, which added 11.5 kilometres of new track from Greenboro Station to Limebank Station. The city entered a design-build-finance-maintain agreement for the project in March 2019.