The CAA recommends that bundling of design projects (such as schools or hospitals) be kept to a minimum since bringing together disparate projects in one proposal call can have unintended consequences for all stakeholders. We encourage project owners to carefully weigh each situation separately before choosing whether to bundle, and/or how many projects to include in a bundle.

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Keeping projects separate (or in very small bundles) enables the work to be shared amongst firms of different sizes, sustains the design industry, and ultimately keeps more Albertans employed.

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When considering bundling design projects together, the CAA encourages owners take into account the following:

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• Customized solutions – Individual projects allow for customized approaches appropriate to the specific context of each site. Local context can be leveraged for maximum impact.
   

• Design excellence – customized solutions have greater potential to meet design excellence guidelines.
   

• Competition – Individual projects (or smaller bundles) may attract more competition from consultants, bringing greater value to the owner and end users.
   

• Reduction in number of firms able to respond – When projects are bundled, as an owner you are pushing more of your infrastructure spending to a specific category of firm. Thus, there are fewer firms able to respond to proposal calls.
   

• Work leaving the province – Bundled projects create the potential for more work to go outside of the province, undermining our provincial economy.
   

• Regional impacts – When local or regional firms take on local projects, there can be positive multiplier effects of spending in their areas, keeping the tax dollars invested and working in the region. Bundling has the potential to re-direct the dollars outside the region (for example when a firm in one part of the province gets a bundle for work done in another part of the province, rather than local firms who subsequently hire local engineers and contractors who spend their earnings in their own region).
   

• Smaller bundles – regionally bundled projects may make more sense economically.