Toon Dreessen is president of Architects DCA. He is a past president of the Ontario Association of Architects.
The federal government has made some bold moves to solve the housing crisis, including opening public land and surplus federal buildings for housing development. This is good. But at heart, getting homes built is a procurement issue and that’s where the government’s leadership falls apart.
Procurement is the process by which the government issues a Request for Proposal (RFP). After scoring their technical merits, bidders’ fees are assessed and a total score is developed, with the top firm winning the job. In theory, this works, but is fraught with challenges.
A key part of formal RFP responses is the effort it takes to build a proposal that meets complex bureaucratic conditions. These barriers can include absurdly high thresholds for experience or insurance that have little or no bearing on the actual needs of the project.
Often, the top technical scores are similar: the bidders with the highest score will have the experience, skill and knowledge to deliver. If all bidders are roughly equally qualified, the fee sets them apart.
That fee is determined by pricing the work in its narrowest definition to do only what the RFP asks for – nothing more, nothing less; do the least work to meet the minimum requirements of the contract. Creative ideas that can generate better value but are outside the narrow definitions of the RFP rarely see the light of day.
Design competitions offer an alternative, such as the recent one for Block 2, a new precinct for the federal government in Ottawa. This successful outcome was supported by Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) and was hailed as a positive move for creative design. Final presentations included public engagement, discussion and media coverage.
Smaller competitions can be simpler. Edmonton hosted a design competition for ”missing-middle” housing, attracting dozens of creative responses. Competitions can be used to create a short list of bidders based on talent, innovation, relatable skills and social procurement goals.
However, when we choose a rigid procurement system, the public loses out on good value because of an overly bureaucratic process. Such is the case with a June RFP to convert surplus federal office buildings into housing across the country.
Across hundreds of pages, PSPC described what they were looking for. Their threshold for minimum acceptable experience was having done at least 15 similar feasibility studies in the last five years that meet specific reporting criteria for PSPC. Bidders were also asked to submit copies of five of their recent feasibility studies converting federal office buildings to housing.
If your firm has actually converted private-sector office buildings into housing, that doesn’t count. If your firm has done other sorts of building conversions, it’s not accepted.
It’s not clear how many feasibility studies have been done for this sort of work in the last five years, if ever. Private-sector developers may use an informal approach to those studies, but this isn’t what PSPC is looking for.
In September, four firms won contracts for this work. Three of them are large multinational corporate firms. That undermines the ability to build technical skills within small/medium-sized businesses, which helps them gain experience which could allow them to compete globally. As The Globe and Mail’s Alex Bozikovic points out, the big firms “are built for this environment” and benefit from being able to tick the boxes of RFPs. Their business model depends on it. Most architecture firms are squeezed out; the majority of firms in Canada have fewer than 50 employees and can’t compete, even for small projects like feasibility studies.
Thousands of firms across the country want to contribute to their communities. They have creative ideas, skills and talent. A more open process could bring underrepresented voices to the table to address core societal needs.
Instead of four firms covering the whole country, groups of smaller firms could have been shortlisted by region. For each building, three to five firms could be offered a modest fee to produce a feasibility study and concept. These could be quickly and easily juried. The top firm could develop their idea, fine-tuning aspects of a final report that addresses key PSPC goals. Each competition entry could include some form of public presentation and engagement, connecting design ideas with the public and building excitement for design possibilities.
Instead, PSPC offered a contract to firms who managed to demonstrate their experience in a field in which little similar work had been done. Hundreds of firms across the country are shut out of their communities.
We need to reform our approach to procurement to be fair, transparent and open to the creative ideas we need to make our communities thriving, vibrant places for their people.