Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’re continually looking for ways to improve our processes and practice in the Government of the Northwest Territories, in particular in Public Works and Services. To that end, I’ve set up regular meetings with the Architects and Construction Association as well as the chambers of commerce, in order to get continual feedback and input from
them on different processes in the Government of the Northwest Territories.
With respect to input from some of the subs that may be utilized in contracts, we’d be open to hearing anything they have to say. We do deal with the primary, but just for the record, when it comes to large projects as well as small projects, where there’s a commitment to use local vendors that have been included by name in the request for proposals, we do require the primaries to provide us with statistics and information on the usage of the individuals they’ve identified.
For instance, on East Three School we have a pretty good reconciliation from the primary on the number of local hires they made, the number of people they hired in the Inuvik area, the number of hours that were put in by local individuals. So in short, we’re always open to hearing from the vendors. They can deal with our Public Works staff in each of the regions who are managing the individual files to provide the input and, as always, we are open to thoughts and suggestions to help us improve our processes as we move forward as a government and a department.