The process used by the federal government to procure goods and services must remain flexible, according to the Canadian Construction Association (CCA).
Process must remain flexible, Ottawa told
BY GRANT CAMERON
STAFF WRITER
The process used by the federal government to procure goods and services must remain flexible, according to the Canadian Construction Association (CCA).
The acquisition of design and construction services should also be treated differently from procurement of other goods and services, the association says.
The comments were made in a brief submitted by the CCA to the Parliamentary Secretary’s Task Force Government-Wide Review of Procurement.
“The procurement of design and construction services is different from other goods and services procurements and that difference needs to be recognized,” the CCA says. “It is not a difference in degree but a difference in kind.”
The answer might be to make sure that design and construction services are treated as a distinct “commodity grouping,” the CCA says.
The CCA brief responded to findings and proposals that have been drafted by the Parliamentary task force. The task force had been asked to make recommendations to the federal government on how best to carry out federal procurement.
Among the recommendations, the task force suggested that the government could adopt a corporate approach to procurement and Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) could be the focal point for accountability and responsibility.
The CCA, which is the collective national voice of the country’s construction industry, says many of the task force proposals speak to the need for a standardized, single-managed procurement system for government to allow for a more co-ordinated and strategic approach.
“These concepts are laudable and indeed sound prudent when one is talking about the straight acquisition of goods, inventory items,” the brief says. “The problem, however, is in applying these concepts to design and construction services where the ultimate objective is not to acquire the services of a specific designer or contractor but to acquire a finished project.”
“In other words,” the CCA brief says, “for design and construction services, the procurement/acquisition process does not end with the award of the contract.
“The delivery of the completed facility/public work is part and parcel of the acquisition process.
“You can not divorce the procurement of the design and construction services from the project delivery/acquisition process. They must remain integrated.”
The CCA says the procurement process itself must remain flexible and responsive to the specific needs of a project.
For example, the CCA says, a project delivery method such as designbuild will, by its very nature, demand a different procurement approach than that utilized for a more traditional design-bid-build delivery option.
The brief notes that PWGSC tends not to recognize the procurement of construction services as being any different than acquiring IT services or goods but that has not always been the case.
Prior to the merger of Public Works Canada and Supply & Services Canada there was a definite distinction, the CCA says.
“In addition, the former Public Works Canada’s central role as the major federal contracting/tendering authority for construction services ensured that it possessed in-house expertise in not only the procurement of design and construction services but knowledge of what those services entailed. That is not necessarily the case today.”
The CCA says it would not support the consolidation of all federal construction procurement under a single federal authority if it means losing that uniqueness and expertise.
On other issues, the CCA says it would like to see a standard form of dispute resolution adopted and also individuals within the procurement function that are specialists in the procurement of design and construction services.
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