Better collaboration among public entities could have been a critical life preserver for many firms swept up in the collapse of Bondfield Construction amid its $80 million worth of fraud allegations, says Graeme Aitken, Electrical Contractors Association of Ontario (ECAO) executive director.
The bankruptcy left a trail of financial devastation in all areas of construction including financing and insurance, he says, but it’s also been a disaster for the mechanical and electrical contractor sector and suppliers involved as invoices have gone unpaid.
“What’s staggering to me is how they could have been in trouble and in the courts in the Niagara area and then get awarded the Cambridge Hospital and then when that was going down in flames get awarded a job in the Kingston area,” he says. “Why aren’t these levels of government talking to each other,” he asks. “This is something we want to pursue and we have talked to the Minister of Labour Skills and Training Development Monte McNaughton about it.”
Governments should be talking to subcontractors to gauge financial stability because they are the canaries in the coal mine, he adds.
Part of the issue is a bidding process that encourages low bids to snag the contract, Aitken says. Another key factor in due diligence for government owners commissioning projects should be to look at the historical capacity of the bidder, Aitken says.
“Do they even have the bond capacity to bite off as much as they did?” he argues.
With the ease of online connection, he says, he’s surprised that governments can’t share a database of construction projects and flag issues with specific contracts to ensure they can ask the right questions.
We’re reaching out to everyone we can and integrating them into our business,
— Graeme Aitken
Electrical Contractors Association of Ontario
The issue fits nicely into ECAO’s overall goal of building on their effective partnerships and collaborations with key partners like IBEW, suppliers and the government.
The drive to collaboration came out of a 2016 report which flagged a trend emerging, at the time, for owners and general contractors ordering electrical materials for their projects directly, cutting the subcontractors out and arguing they were getting better pricing and more control.
To counter that, the ECAO took an approach of community building.
“They used to giggle when we first started talking about it,” he says. “But it’s not just a catch phrase. Our relationship now with the IBEW Construction Council of Ontario is better than ever and they’ve worked hard with us. Now we are working with affiliates, not just manufacturers, but suppliers and service providers like lawyers, insurance providers, the entire construction industry. We’re reaching out to everyone we can and integrating them into our business.”
One of the key stakeholders is the government itself, and Aitken reports a healthy dialogue with McNaughton since he took the role as Minister of Labour Skills and Training Development.
“It’s important not just to get people into the skilled trades, like electrical, but just as important to make sure they come out of the apprenticeship pipeline at the other end and a lot of them don’t. We need to find out why,” he says.
Looking ahead through 2020, Aitken says, things look positive in many key areas.
“Jobsite support, for example, there’s been a tremendous uptake in using technology whether it’s estimate or health and safety with laptops and cell phones,” he says. “That’s one area where we’ve worked with the IBEW. Some unions have resisted their members using their own cell phones but the IBEW has been very supportive because they recognize the advances in technology.”
The National Electrical Contractors Association in the U.S. has also been helpful bringing their Canadian counterparts up to speed on some of the jobsite technologies being rapidly adopted there.
In the U.S., for example, technology is being used to get real-time information on specifications, product updates and details of inventory, he says.
“Pre-fab is another area,” explained Aitken. “Take a hospital as an example. They will build a wall in the shop with all the electrical and the tails hanging out of the boxes and ship it to the hospital site in a job box with trolley wheels. It also has a tablet that is shipped with it.
“They tick off the tablet as it is installed. The project manager then has real time installation details. Any materials needed are linked to the supplier database and it’s the supplier who tracks the inventory and whether it’s too low.”
It means electricians are standing around waiting for materials or filling out reams of paperwork, he says.
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