As the new chief operating officer of the Ontario Road Builders’ Association (ORBA), David Caplan wants to focus his efforts on responding to the needs of members and establishing strong relationships throughout the industry.
“Anytime that you’re in any kind of organization you have to be responsive to your members. In my previous life, I thought about it in terms of constituents and citizens, here it’s the membership of the association,” explained Caplan, who was Ontario’s first minister of infrastructure.
“I also want to work on our relationship with our customers, with peers and allies throughout construction. I really do want to work on establishing strong relationships and mostly to ensure ORBA is a continued strong voice for civil construction in Ontario.”
Caplan will officially take over as COO on Dec. 4. He said it presents a tremendous opportunity at an exciting time, with the renewed focus on building and maintaining infrastructure in the province.
“ORBA has had a challenging year and they were looking for leadership and that really appealed to me because I see tremendous potential,” Caplan stated. “ORBA’s got a long and very proud history of building foundations here in the province of Ontario.”
Caplan was instrumental in leading the development of Renew Ontario, a $30-billion investment plan in the province’s infrastructure, introducing new finance delivery models such as Alternative Financing and Procurement (AFP) into Ontario and creating Infrastructure Ontario.
He described Renew Ontario as a plan that included engagement with government ministries and the compiling of projects to make the process more cohesive and efficient. Infrastructure Ontario was the mechanism by which the plan was to be delivered, he explained, and the AFP models were the tools in the tool box.
“The innovation that I brought was that we were going to create a hybrid of public sector excellence and private sector expertise and create an organization called Infrastructure Ontario that would have that,” Caplan stated, adding that type of innovation could also be applied to ORBA. “One of the real hallmarks has been the credibility it’s developed by doing things differently and then by building on that success in delivering projects.”
With his background, expertise and a unique perspective, Caplan said he can bring value to the association.
“With a history in public service, I understand some of these issues from a different perspective, one that hasn’t been a part of ORBA before and I think that can position us well particularly in a time of some of the transitions that we are seeing, as we’re seeing more interest in things like asset management,” said Caplan. “The members of our association are particularly interested in serving their customers who are in some cases provincial government, in some cases local government, there are private owners too and that’s something we want to be responsive to.
“Understanding, working with, developing good relations is only going to benefit members of ORBA. Breaking down silos is really one of the ways I can help ORBA because government tends to be very segmented.”
Other areas of expertise where Caplan can assist include policy and management.
“I think my time in public service will really help us to work with owners to see some better outcomes, to have improved accountability, to bring quality assurance measures and to do those kinds of things is going to benefit both the owners and the contractors,” he said.
Caplan served as minister of infrastructure from 2003 to 2007 and minister of health and long-term care from 2007 to 2009. He decided not to run in the 2011 provincial election. Prior to joining ORBA, he was vice-chair of Global Public Affairs in Toronto. Caplan takes over from former COO Geoff Wilkinson.
“For me, I had served 20 years in public life and that was a long time. I decided that I really wanted a change and to change my focus professionally,” said Caplan. “I did that and made the successful transition. When the opportunity to lead ORBA came along I really thought it would be another great chapter in my career. I left accomplishing many important goals but was always mindful that the next generation of leadership is going to come and it was certainly their turn to do that.”
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