July was a very busy month, only partially due to the CAA’s fiscal year end. That in itself triggers significant activity on the business aspect of the CAA.  Added to that this year is the earlier deadline for submissions for the CAA Business Awards program, which necessitates seeking judges for the submissions.

As well, moving the CAA AGM to an earlier date than previously keeps us very active to get all the bits and pieces of the event prepared sooner than usual.

July this year also involved additional work regarding the Pitching Green initiative, most specifically developing a survey that will be sent out very soon.

Beyond these actions, the CAA’s main focus is on contract issues and the impacts they have for architects in Alberta.

One of the key gems that works on this is the CAA Procurements and Contracts (P&C) committee that meets every month.  Issues are put forward by committee members and /or from other architects advising about issues that they have come across.  For most of the issues, the CAA reaches out to  the client/organization. Some issues are dealt with through phone calls or letters and some through face-to-face meetings.

A couple of recent issues were:

  •    The subject of COR Safety certification was discussed with the outcome of both CAA and       the AAA agreeing to send separate letters to the City of Red Deer.
  •    The CAA also sent a letter to Lakeland College regarding the weighting of fees in their              RFP.

An example of ongoing issues is the AHS contracts.  The P&C Committee has requested an update about the various AHS contract issues and expects to have a conference call with our contact for the  September meeting. 

The CAA is involved in several committees with the sole purpose of improving the working conditions for architects.  This includes Alberta Infrastructure’s Industry Liaison Committee as well as AI’s Procurement committee.  Both of these committees went hiatus over the summer months, but are scheduled to ramp up again in September.

In addition to the work that the P&C does, several CAA members also participate in a variety of meetings. That includes CEA driven committees, and also several committees and meetings with Alberta infrastructure, the City of Calgary, the City of Edmonton, Alberta Health Services, the University of Edmonton, to name a few.

If you are interesting in joining a committee or if you come across contract issues, please let me know.


Cheers,

Jayne Jeneroux

Executive Director

Consulting Architects of Alberta

780.488.8878

P.S.   Did you know that the CAA has a Twitter account, an Instagram account and alsoLinkedin?  Check them out!

ALSO – please mark your calendar and plan to attend the 2018 CAA Annual General Meeting, which takes place on September 20, at the University of Alberta.