Design Contract Value & Details

The prime design contract is valued at $4.8 million, which includes the design team and eleven other sub-consultants. Sub-consultants will oversee areas such as mechanical, civil, electrical and structural engineering; landscape architecture and wayfinding; sustainability; acoustics; building envelope; security and audio-visual; and cost. In this case, the sub-consultants are mostly local firms. In other words, approximately $2 million dollars (about 45%) of the design contract will go to local sub-consultants. The construction tender will be issued at the completion of design, at an estimated value of $73.3 million.

The province of Saskatchewan’s New West Trade Partnership agreement governs procurement at the Saskatoon Public Library (SPL). This agreement creates the largest barrier-free interprovincial market in Canada. The procurement guidelines explicitly prohibit the protection of local suppliers, meaning that in this case, Saskatoon-based firms cannot receive preference.

SPL entered into a rigorous and fair request for proposals (RFP) process, which invited all interested parties to submit proposals for integrating Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of knowing into a state-of-the-art library. SPL took a progressive approach to developing the scoring rubric, placing value on team experience, relevant project experience, references and cost. The scoring rubric also scored on criteria of understanding of design objectives, leadership and collaboration, history of designing within budget constraints, and plans for community engagement. This approach resulted in selecting the best overall team, not the lowest-priced proposal.