Building Equity to Achieve the City We Aspire to be

Something needs to change so we can build #OurBestOttawa.

The change Campaign

CHALLENGE

Ottawa struggles with ineffective procurement policies and processes that often result in mediocre or sub-optimal outcomes. The City of Ottawa spends enormous amounts of time and money on procurement, but resulting in poorly planned projects with lower than expected return on investment. At its core, many of these challenges are driven by an improper procurement process that emphasizes low fees and marginalized efforts at the expense of impactful, transformational, change in the public interest.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Elected city officials
Policy makers and decision makers within the City of Ottawa
Organizations like Ottawa Community Housing and Ottawa Police Services
The four Ottawa School Boards
Ottawa’s colleges and universities.

OUTCOME

Shed more light on how the current process is broken, and its impact on the public interest, climate change, value, quality, small businesses and the construction industry.

OBJECTIVE

There are four key objectives

Adopt a Qualifications Based Selection process that bases procurement decisions on knowledge, skill and talent while encouraging local firms, emerging talent and diverse experience to contribute to creating a vibrant and dynamic City.
Adopt two-phase submissions and evaluations that can include some limited design competitions, creating a venue for design explorations, public and social engagement, demonstration of talent and skill combined with a QBS process of fair procurement.
Encourage the City to hire a City Architect, following on examples from other Canadian cities and large organizations, to promote design excellence, foster a design culture for people-centered design outcomes, lead procurement reform and advise Council on decisions in the built environment
Encourage the City to adopt an overarching policy on architecture, creating a leadership role for built environment policy that befits the capital of a G7 country and creates a role model for excellence in placemaking, people-centric design.

SPONSORS & SUPPORTERS

We need your help to reach the targeted audiences that have the ability to actually effect change, but without your help, we will continue to be frustrated and see no improvement. Do you want to help contribute to the voice that can help make this a better city to live in?

We'd love your support to help get the attention this matter truly needs.

This movement is being led by a coalition of Ottawa-based architecture, engineering, landscape architecture and construction firms who believe that better procurement practices will lead to a better city. Contact us below to get involved and find out more.

We need your support. If you are interested in helping spread a message like this to key stakeholders who can make a difference, then we also need your financial contribution for this awareness campaign to help get as many eyes on our important message as possible.

Please fill out the form below and we will get back to you on how you can be a part of the conversation.

Want to Speak to the Mayor and / or City Councillor

PROCUREMENT NEWS

"RESEARCH SHOWS THAT A CLIENT'S NEEDS ARE BEST MET WHEN THE "BEST SUITED" CONSULTANT IS SELECTED BY VIRTUE OF ITS QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS, AND EXPERIENCE TO DELIVER A QUALITY PRODUCT". Federation of CDN Municipalities.

For more articles on this very important topic please feel free to read more here:

Learn More about Quality-Based Selection

OAA - Qualifications-Based Selection is the Global Procurement Standard for Architecture Services

Why won't Toronto strive for great public buildings? (2022)

RAIC - Qualification Based Selection

Why Design Competitions Matter - Alex Bozikovic (2022)

How to Build a Great Library - Ottawa needs to take a lesson from Calgary (2018)

Don't Do Spec Work (Video) - #SayNoToSpec

Contract fairness (June 2021)

Building social equity (Nov 2020)

State of the Nation: Ontario (July 2019)

Broken procurement is a threat to the public interest (Nov 2019)