Congratulations to the Saskatchewan consulting engineering industry for an outstanding year.  Our industry has undergone massive change recently, from facing numerous layoffs just 18 short months ago to rapidly scaling up in recent months in response to a massive, erratic roll-out of capital projects. We know your resources have been stretched significantly to respond to an extremely rapid increase in volume of public and private sector infrastructure work. All sectors benefited, but not without cost.

The year 2021 will be remembered for many things, including being challenged with adjusting COVID requirements, unclear procurement processes, extremely long hours to deliver, to moving schedules and budgets, and making critical go/no-go decisions with minimal information to meet clients’ aggressive commitments.

Your association has been working diligently on your behalf as we heard your opinions about such things as local labour evaluation criteria, increased insurance requirements, capacity issues, and more recently the loss of educational programs that directly support this industry, and newly established COVID vaccine and testing mandates.

Throughout the year, ACEC-SK met with senior leadership at entities such as SaskBuilds and the City of Saskatoon.  We held a successful virtual MLA Week where we met with 10 Cabinet Ministers, multiple MLAs from both parties and senior government officials to impart the need for better capital planning.  We continued to work with the provincial government to encourage the continuation of market sounding opportunities, and to ramp up the sharing of information about upcoming major projects. We continue to engage decision makers about procurement concerns, including with Water Security Agency and SaskPower.  We’ve maintained a Professional and Business Development virtual program this year, offered in-person networking opportunities such as our annual Golf Tournament, as well as celebrated industry excellence through our in-person Awards of Distinction program.

As we close out this year, I personally hope each and every one of you gets some much-deserved rest after this intense year, and I look forward to supporting you in 2022.

Beverly MacLeod

Executive Director

December 17, 2021