Over the last several years, ACEC-SK has been actively engaged in conversations with government and other private sector industries about the upcoming Prompt Payment legislation’s impacts on this industry.  It was presented almost from the start as inevitable in Saskatchewan, so our association’s efforts were spent on learning everything we could in order to assist our members transition into this new business reality.

Our members are very much a part of the construction supply chain, with the potential to receive payment from multiple sources – e.g. client, architect, contractor, etc.  Our members are also payment certifiers for clients, and therefore, have huge exposure to the stringent payment timelines dictated by this legislation.  As well, consultants are responsible to pay their sub-consultants within the constraints of this legislation, another business implication for the consulting engineering industry.

Our Association hosted an education session about the upcoming Prompt Payment legislation in February 2020 as a member service.  We understood the importance of having our members ready to react once the legislation was implemented.  The only piece missing from that information session was the regulations.  Our members needed to be aware of how the regulations would impact our industry before being able to put all of the Prompt Payment legislation pieces together.

After all of this effort, much to our surprise we now learn that within the newly introduced regulations, Architects and Engineers are exempt from the legislation.  We understand that this has already trickled down within some RFPs from a limited number of government entities. We do not know whether this is permanent, or whether government is still open to dialogue about engineering inclusion/exclusion in the regulations.  We will not be able to move the needle on this one until after the election.  However, you can be certain that your Association will get to the bottom of it and will provide updates as to our progress!

October 5, 2020