Strategic Opportunities Committee - Communiqué 4

The Ontario Realty Corporation (ORC) has confirmed that it will base its new Consultant Contract on an industry standard form. The Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) Document 600 Standard Form of Contract for Architectural Services will be used with standard supplementary conditions reflecting ORC’s specific needs.

This decision follows closely on ORC’s adoption of CCDC 2 as the foundation of its new Construction Contract to be used with a set of standard supplementary conditions. Developed with industry, a draft of those supplementary conditions was recently approved in principle by the Ontario General Contractors Association Board of Directors.

In announcing this latest decision, ORC Senior Vice President, Project Services Mike Greidanus explains, “We are working towards simplification and clarity in re-engineering our business model. Our goal is to create a higher level of success in our projects. Using industry standard contracts as the foundation of our documents is an important step toward achieving that objective.”

OAA President Sean O’Reilly reacted positively to the announcement, saying “The design professions have been pressing ORC to use the OAA contract, and are very pleased to learn that it has committed to do so.” O’Reilly added that the OAA, Consulting Engineers of Ontario and the Association of Registered Interior Designers of Ontario “are anxious now to work with ORC to develop the supplementary conditions that will be used to create a standard ORC consultant agreement.”

ORC’s Greidanus responds that ORC is also interested in moving forward quickly. “Our construction and consulting contracts are, of course, tightly linked. Based on our positive experience working with the SOC on the construction contract, we are optimistic we can have the consultant supplementary conditions completed in Summer 2008.”

CEO President John Gamble cited this as “yet another example of the positive results arising from ORC’s consultation with the industry through the recently reactivated Strategic Opportunities Committee.”

Greidanus will be speaking to a roundtable at the Ontario Association of Architects Annual Conference on Friday, May 2 in Niagara Falls. He will discuss this and other key components of ORC’s new Project Services Delivery Model, including a simplified process for consultants to pre-qualify for work on ORC projects and the process for outsourcing project management services. Greidanus notes that an RFP for project management service providers will be issued early in the Summer of 2008.

Work will continue on the detailed development and implementation of the new model, in consultation with the industry through SOC, over much of the balance of 2008.

The Ontario Realty Corporation is a crown corporation of the Government of Ontario and, as one of Canada’s largest real estate management companies, is a major customer of Ontario’s design and construction sector, initiating 2,000 to 2,500 projects annually worth approximately $350 million.

The Strategic Opportunities Committee (SOC) was initiated in 2004 and re-energized in 2008 at the invitation of ORC President and CEO David Glass and ORC Chief Operating Officer Greg Dadd, to facilitate constructive consultation between ORC and the design and construction industry. Participants in this standing liaison committee include Consulting Engineers of Ontario, the Ontario General Contractors Association, the Ontario Association of Architects and the Association of Registered Interior Designers of Ontario, as well as the ORC itself. The Committee currently has three working groups focusing on standard contracts; prequalification, evaluation and procurement; and, improvements to ORC’s outsourced project management model.