8 BUILD MANITOBA winnipegconstruction.ca Welcome to the summer issue of Build Manitoba. It’s been a busy and interesting spring and summer so far, with the recent announcement of a provincial election on top of the October federal election. Here are some of the issues we are working on both inside and outside the office: Building permits, and their timely approval, have long been an issue with members. We have worked long and hard at exploring options and alternatives for improving the permit process within Winnipeg and this has been a cooperative effort with the permits department staff. Flowing from the permits discussion, issues have been raised related to building inspections, including difficulties in setting up appointments and inconsistent code interpretations. Work culture within some City of Winnipeg departments has been questioned in the past; however, Winnipeggers were treated to a very troubling surveillance report in May that provided video evidence of work avoidance by a large number of City inspectors. City politicians and planning officials have expressed outrage and investigations are underway. Action is clearly needed here, and while we are confident in the management of the department, we hope these issues can be addressed quickly and the necessary controls put in place. Recently, the Province of Manitoba announced an independent review of the planning, zoning, permitting and inspection process with emphasis on the role of the City of Winnipeg, the Office of the Fire Commissioner and Manitoba Hydro. The Treasury Board Secretariat was tasked with this review and consulted with WCA and many other groups, and then issued a series of recommendations. While detail is lacking on many of these action items, they include legislated service standards, the need for Capital region land use planning and approvals, and adopting the 2015 National Building Code. I suspect some of these ideas will be explored during the provincial election campaign. We have completed a comprehensive membership survey and are working on compiling the results and comparing them to previous surveys. We look forward to sharing the results with you in the fall issue of Build Manitoba. Manitoba is somewhat unique in its geography and centralized population base so it can be difficult to compare our results with those of neighbouring provinces. Regardless, we listen to our members’ concerns and tailor our initiatives accordingly. Finally, many of you have discovered the member-facing side of “DNA,” our new membership management system which replaced our website and requires members to book courses and events or buy documents through the system. While the system requires everyone to log in, the upside is that we get information as to which members are actively using our services – and, more importantly, which members are not so that we can reach out to them and ensure they are seeing value from their membership dues. Those are just a few of the items that we have been busy with and will keep us working over the next few months. In closing, I would like to wish all of our members a productive, profitable and safe summer, and look forward to hearing from you in the fall. Ronald Hambley, President FROM OUR PRESIDENT Issues and Inefficiencies in Permit Process