ACEC-SK hosted the consulting engineering industry’s Western Provinces meeting in Regina on April 1, 2014.  Jason Gasmo (Chair), Stormy Holmes (Vice Chair), Mel Leu (Past Chair), and Beverly MacLeod (Executive Director) were pleased to welcome senior leadership teams from the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies – British Columbia, Consulting Engineers of Alberta, Association of Consulting Engineering Companies – Manitoba, as well as from ACEC, the national association.

The purpose of this annual meeting is for individual jurisdictions to share and learn from one another’s experiences.  Therefore, this year’s agenda included issues that all jurisdictions are challenged by, as well as items where unique circumstances have afforded one jurisdiction insights that it was able to share with its sister organizations.  These meetings have now been happening for almost 10 years, and have proven to be a valuable exercise to assist senior leadership teams learn how to better assist their members. 

One long-standing issue has been the impacts on our industry of the procurement aspects of the New West Partnership Trade Agreement (NWPTA). The Alberta delegation reported it has been gaining some traction with their provincial government to accept an alternate procurement framework. There is more and more evidence that several leaders within the Alberta government recognize Qualifications-Based Selection (QBS) as the procurement model of choice, and adopting this would address our industry’s concerns about public clients assigning projects based on cost. Given the NWPTA is a tri-party agreement among BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, if there is movement toward QBS in Alberta, then there is opportunity to influence governments in Saskatchewan and BC to ultimately put in place this alternate procurement framework.  This is the goal of ACEC-SK.

In addition, the group discussed challenges with contractual language, governance, approaches to the media, liability, business integrity, member engagement, member recruitment, and value for members, including an upcoming national survey.

Regardless of the size of the jurisdiction, participants discover they have more in common than they do differences, and look forward each year to learning from their inter-provincial colleagues how to provide value for their local members.