Muskrat manager says changing ideology at Nalcor prompted his departure last year

A senior member of the Muskrat Falls project management team says he left Nalcor Energy in early 2017 because of what he said wasa changing ideology at the leadership level that didn't match his values.

"I made a values-based decision to move on," Jason Kean said Thursday during testimony at the public inquiry that is investigating the controversial project.

Kean said he wasn't "aligned" with the new ideology.

"[I didn't] believe in the way things were being operated," he said. "It wasn't the right place for me."

Values of respect and dignity

That stinging indictment of Nalcor leadership comes while the inquiry is trying to find out why costs have soared and work is years behind schedule on the controversial hydroelectric project.

And it comes from someone who played a critical role in the project for a decade, with Kean having served as deputy general project manager prior to his departure in February 2017.

Kean is the first member of the inner circle of those planning and managing construction of the Muskrat Falls projects to testify, and he made it clear he left the Crown corporation because he was frustrated.

He said thevalues of respect and dignity were not being upheld. "And I decided that wasn't right."

Kean, a mechanical engineer, has a master's degree in business administration and worked mainly in the oil and gas sector before joining Nalcor as a consultant in early 2007.

He testified his consulting company, which included Kean and his wife, was paid a "day rate" of between $1,000 and $1,200.

Kean was heavily involved in the development of cost and schedule estimates for Muskrat Falls, including the numbers produced for important project milestones in 2010, when Nalcor reached agreement with Nova Scotia's Emera, and at project sanctioning in 2012.

Kean was grilled on the development of those estimates, which have come under fire from every direction because of the billions in cost overruns that have occurred since construction started.

But Kean stood by the estimates used at sanctioning in 2012, saying he felt "100 per cent confident" in the numbers.

Departs in the Stan Marshall era

As for his criticism of the leadership at Nalcor, Kean didn't offer any names. But his departure came less than a year after Stan Marshall was appointed CEO.

Marshall replaced longtime CEO Ed Martin in the spring of 2016, with Martin leaving under a cloud of controversy following a change in government in Newfoundland and Labrador, and growing concern about Muskrat's escalating costs and delays.

• Nalcor's appetite for risk on Muskrat Falls increased in 2010, inquiry told

Marshall immediately shook things up by acknowledging publicly that Muskrat was a boondoggle, and divided the project management team into two divisions generation and transmission with Kean focusing on overland transmission.

A Nalcorspokesperson declined to comment.

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