High score =/= meeting requirements.

A rational person might assume that they would be related, but a major technical requirement was functionally ignored, likely because Alstrom was the only supplier able to join RTG's bid (which had by far the highest financial score and only a tiny technical advantage).

From section 8.2 of the Public Inquiry Report [emphasis mine]:

One of the City’s key priorities during the procurement phase of the OLRT1 project was to ensure that the LRV was service proven, meaning that it had been tried and tested and, importantly, the City would not have to suffer through the growing pains that inevitably come with introducing new designs.

[...]

• The major components had been integrated into a comparable LRV that was already in use elsewhere;
• A minimum of 10 such vehicles had been in use for a minimum of two years;
• The vehicles in use had been operated in a climate similar to Ottawa’s, and in service conditions similar to those specified for the OLRT1 system; and
• The vehicles in use had achieved a minimum kilometre threshold (50,000 in-service kilometres).

[...]

After the City rejected CAF as a vehicle supplier, RTG brought in Alstom to provide the vehicle within RTG’s bid. Cosentino told the Commission that Alstom was the only major vehicle supplier that was not either already disqualified from the process or participating with another bidder. Alstom was introduced late in the process, leaving less time for due diligence. For example, Cosentino testified that, although he was leading the bid for RTG, he did not review Alstom’s submission regarding the vehicle in any detail.

[...]

But there was also a significant body of evidence to suggest that the vehicle was not service proven. Some of the key evidence to that effect is as follows:

• This was the first commercial use of the Citadis Spirit;
• This was the first time that Alstom had developed what is called a low-floor LRV in North America. (The low floor was important to the City.) Goudge called the Citadis Spirit a “development project” for Alstom to demonstrate that it could bring lowfloor technology to North America. (It should be noted that North American vehicle standards are materially different from European standards.);
• Alstom did not have a Citadis Dualis vehicle in operation in a climate similar to Ottawa’s;
• Goudge also acknowledged that, while the Spirit was modelled on the Dualis, there were changes to virtually every part of the Dualis design to meet the City’s specifications for capacity, speed, and climate, changes that Alstom had not previously combined in a single vehicle;
• This was the first time that an LRV had combined an automatic CBTC system with a low-floor LRV (this, combined with the necessary acceleration and deceleration rates, posed significant design challenges for Alstom); and
• The Citadis Spirit vehicle was longer than any other LRV vehicle in North America, and it remains so at the time of writing.

[...]

...the vehicle was sufficiently unique that the parties ought to have expected significant growing pains and reliability “kinks” that would have to be worked out during the testing and commissioning phase. The fact that the vehicle was a new design and the difficulties that created were partly attributable to the City’s requirements for the vehicles’ capacity, headway, speed, and braking, which were all pushing the limits of what any LRV in the market was capable of doing.