City of Winnipeg to tender social procurement pilot projects in 2024

The plans to roll out Public Works and Water & Waste pilot projects with social procurement clauses is expected to proceed in January through March, but a proposal to include them in all construction tenders may be put on hold, pending refinement.

The City of Winnipeg Social Procurement Liaison met November 30 with members of the Manitoba Heavy Construction Association and the Winnipeg Construction Association to explain why and how such clauses would roll out in tenders. The clauses would require, for example, bidders to commit to thresholds for hiring and training of individuals from equity groups, such as Indigenous, BIPOC, LGBTQI2S+, newcomers, racialized people and those facing poverty.

The City’s social procurement action plan seeks to spread the benefits of Winnipeg’s $400-million+ annual spending to groups that have been under-represented in the procurement of services, supplies and construction tenders.

Those doing business with the city will be required to show they have policies and practices that target hiring and training, for example, of individuals in equity groups.

The construction tender clauses will be drawn from the City’s “social value menu” which sets out requirements. To see the proposed clauses click here.

The 2024 pilot projects will carry one clause each, relating to the hiring or training of targeted equity group individuals. While bidders will have to commit to that undertaking to have their submission qualify – a simple pass/fail exercise — there will be no accountability assessed on the contractor at completion of the pilot project.   

While the participants were initially informed the City was considering putting the clauses in all 2024 street renewal and water & waste tenders, that was less definitive following the numerous questions and concerns voiced at the session.

Among the concerns were:

• contractors do not know which crews or workers will be assigned specific construction project, therefore committing to have a percentage or number of equity individuals working for each project will be difficult
• the commitment for hiring or training catches the work done by sub-contractors, but at time of bid submission, contractors may not know who the sub-contractors might be and, further, gathering those numbers from subs would prove difficult to impractical
• contractors may feel pressured to shift individuals who have self-identified with an equity group to certain projects, displacing workers who would otherwise be on site – that then creates an environment in which labels are placed on individuals

The participants noted that rather than counting the hires, for example, for a specific project that it could be better to do pre-qualification of firms with company-wide employment and training targets.

The City of Winnipeg committed to taking the concerns back and considering them in the next draft of the social value menu. Further, the construction industry will be invited to a training session in January, once the final social value menu is written.