InfraGuide Releases Best Practice Guide on Selecting a Professional Consultant
Created by stakeholders from Canadian municipalities and specialists from across Canada, InfraGuide recently released a best practice guide for the selection of consultants for municipalities. The guide, titled Selecting a Professional Consultant endorses the principles of qualifications-based selection, in contrast to lowest price bidding as a method for selecting a professional consultant. While many professional bodies recommend qualifications-based methods, the process is still not widely used.
The guide notes that long-term savings can be gained from high-quality engineering services, adding value in the form of innovation, sustainability and life cycle analysis, while the savings provided by lowest price design are short-term. If the engineering fees—which generally make up 1-2% of the total life-cycle cost of a project—are carefully invested, municipalities can save significantly on construction, operation and maintenance costs, which make up the remaining 98-99% of the life-cycle costs.
This best practice is valuable to the consulting engineering sector, allowing engineering firms to provide clients with superior expertise and technical capabilities, but also with an understanding and appreciation of project objectives and available resources, thus enabling a return on investment and risk. It is intended to ensure that quality, reliability and safety in Canada’s infrastructure is sustained.
InfraGuide comprises a national network of experts and a collection of published best practices guides for use by municipal decision makers and technical personnel. A number of APEGBC members played key roles in the creation of this best practices guide. John Bremner, P.Eng. and Chuck Gale, P.Eng. collaborated as consultants on this document, and Francis Cheung, P.Eng. was a part of working group that helped to develop it. Dave Rudberg, P.Eng. was a peer reviewer for the publication.
InfraGuide was founded by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Infrastructure Canada, the National Research Council, and the Canadian Public Works Council.
For more information on Selecting a Professional Consultant, as well as the full publication, see the InfraGuide website at www.infraguide.ca/bestPractices/PublishedBP_e.asp#dmip.