Representatives of the companies designing, building and operating Waterloo Region’s light rail transit system say the biggest obstacle they face will be communicating the effect their work has on the commutes and day-to-day lives of the public.

“Managing the interaction with the community is going to be the biggest challenge for us,” said Martin Stickland, who spearheaded Plenary Group’s role in the GrandLinq consortium.

Stickland made those remarks Thursday during a media event at which GrandLinq members made their first public comments about the Ion system.

He also said that while any light rail transit system is “complex”, nothing in the specifications for Ion suggests an unusual level of difficulty – comments echoed by Denis Gallant of Keolis Canada, another member of GrandLinq.

“It’s a classic system. It’s something we’ve seen in our other projects,” Gallant said.

Construction work in preparation for the LRT line has been ongoing for months, and a detailed construction schedule is expected to be released in the next few weeks.

All parties say sticking to that schedule will be a top priority – as will making sure residents know what to expect, when to expect it and how to avoid it.

“When you’re working in congested areas and doing a lot of construction work, with those orange signs and orange pylons, you need to work hard at community relations … and making sure whatever disruption is going to happen is minimized,” said John Beck of Aecon, the third GrandLinq member present Thursday.

Coun. Sean Strickland told those in attendance that their work would be watched more closely than that of any other municipal project ever undertaken in the region.

“While we want to focus on those milestones in project delivery, we also have to remember the little things,” he said.

“How do we manage the traffic? How do we manage the detours so that people travelling in their cars can see clearly where they need to go? These little things are going to be really important.”

The full system is expected to be up and running by 2017. It will cost $818 million to build and $901 million over 30 years to run for that period of time.