WINNIPEG – The City of Winnipeg plans to roll out public works and water and waste projects with social procurement clauses in January through March 2024.
However, a proposal to include the clauses in all construction tenders may be put on hold pending refinement, a Manitoba Heavy Construction Association (MHCA) release said.
The City of Winnipeg social procurement liaison met Nov. 30 with members of the MHCA and the Winnipeg Construction Association (WCA) to explain why and how such clauses would roll out in tenders.
“The clauses would require, for example, bidders to commit to thresholds for hiring and training of individuals from equity groups, such as Indigenous, BIPOC, LGBTQI2S+, newcomers, racialized people and those facing poverty,” the release added. “The City of Winnipeg’s social procurement action plan seeks to spread the benefits of Winnipeg’s $400-million-plus annual spending to groups that have been under-represented in the procurement of services, supplies and construction tenders.”
Those doing business with the city will be required to show they have policies and practices that target hiring and training, for example, of individuals in equity groups. The construction tender clauses will be drawn from the city’s “social value menu” which sets out requirements. The 2024 pilot projects will carry one clause each, relating to the hiring or training of targeted equity group individuals.
“While bidders will have to commit to that undertaking to have their submission qualify – a simple pass/fail exercise — there will be no accountability assessed on the contractor at completion of the pilot project,” the MHCA release said.
Concerns voiced by MHCA and WCA participants at the Nov. 30 session included not knowing which crews or workers will be assigned specific construction projects, and feeling pressured to shift individuals who have self-identified with an equity group to certain projects, displacing workers who would otherwise be onsite and creating an environment in which labels are placed on individuals.
The participants also pointed to the commitment to hiring and training subcontractors, and said at the time of bid submission, contractors may not know who the subcontractors might be and, further, gathering those numbers from subs would prove difficult to impractical.
They also suggested in the MHCA release that “rather than counting the hires, for example, for a specific project that it could be better to do pre-qualification of firms with company-wide employment and training targets.”
“The City of Winnipeg committed to taking the concerns back and considering them in the next draft of the social value menu. Further, the construction industry will be invited to a training session in January, once the final social value menu is written,” the release said.
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