Even though the festive season is upon us, the CAA continues to work with Alberta Infrastructure (AI) to develop fair, even, and industry appropriate contracts on behalf of our members.

Today we had a very productive meeting with AI which led to AI’s agreement to change a number of clauses to their standard Agreement. AI has agreed to start using these new contract clauses by mid to late January. While these changes are not all the conditions we are negotiating to have changed or deleted, they are a significant step forward to fair contracts within our industry. Our goal has always been to bring AI to be fully aligned with the “gold standard” – the RAIC Doc. 6.

 

The soon to be released Agreement update will address many of the clause concerns we have been hearing from our members including: an inclusion of a Standard Duty of Care clause; the removal of words such as “best” and “highest”; a fee breakdown that reflects the reality of upfront costs when using BIM; the removal of a number of onerous clauses such as the LEED penalty; the removal of AI’s “set-off” ability to consultant fees; and significantly the removal of the one-sided discretion of the province overriding normal standards of practice.

AI has committed to have this updated release Agreement issued with new RFP’s mid-January to late January and both the CAA and AI are working over the Christmas season to achieve this date.

 

Rather than wait until the end of all contract discussions, the CAA pushed for the release of the updated Agreement to include those acceptable changes and suggested that the remaining unresolved clause issues, be placed in a temporary “parking lot” for further discussion immediately beginning in the New Year. By deferring the unresolved and still contentious clauses, we are able to put out to the market a significantly better AI Agreement than that which currently exists.  The CAA will continue to work with AI in the New Year in hopes of:

    •           Deleting the signing over of Intellectual Property, Copyright, Moral and Patent Rights to AI;
    •           Removing unlimited liability clauses;
    •           Removing of uninsurable clauses; and
    •           Removing of defend and hold harmless clauses.

 

AI is also looking at implementing some new clauses which are of grave concern to CAA and our members:

    •           A new clause (with which the CAA is absolutely opposed) is the contractual requirement that the Prime Consultant may be required to accept Prime Contractor status with respect to site safety; and
    •           Requiring that personal information obtained during the performance of work with AI must be retained within Canada.

 

We also established a communications process between AI and the CAA to enable our members to share issues you have with RFQs and RFPs.  CAA Executive Director Jayne Jeneroux will be the first point of contact for the CAA in reaching out to AI, and can be reached at 780-237-8509, or through the CAA 780-488-8878, or toll free at 877-488-8780.  You may also reach Jayne by email.

 

The CAA continues to work with AI and others to develop fair contracts.