drive the growth of Canadian con- struction workloads over the next 12 months. And the recent election re- sults “appear to make this even more likely, longer and stronger, based on the polling results and reaction from respondents,” it says. Canadian con- struction professionals participating in RICS’ quarter three 2015 survey (con- ducted before the election) had pre- dicted their total workloads would increase about 2.87 per cent over the coming year, with the infrastructure section foreseen as the driver of growth. Given the massive Liberal infra- structure commitments and the gov- ernment’s “willingness to run a deficit to fund them in the short term, the in- frastructure sector in Canada should be busy for years to come,” said Do- minic Leadsom with Turner and Townsend in Toronto. “For RICS and other infrastructure professionals, this provides a welcome boost and a sig- nificant opportunity to use their ex- pertise in expediting the delivery of these projects.” “This new federal spending will have a significant and positive impact on workload,” agrees Liam Murray, principal of JLM Development Facili- tators in Vancouver – and probably without the customary transitional “freeze.” “How much infrastructure spending increases, or even if it does, depended on who won the election. Historically, when there is a change in government there is invariably a pe- riod when the incoming administra- tion will evaluate the overall financial situation. This usually means a short- term spending freeze, delaying capital projects in the pipeline. However, with the big win for the Liberal Party, which ran on a platform of increased capital spending and three years of deficits to fund that spending, this is now un- likely to occur.” Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) The new government “has an un- paralleled opportunity to create re- silient communities, build a strong and diverse economy and foster healthy workplaces that support pro- ductivity,” says RAIC president Sam Oboh. “The federal government is Canada’s single largest owner of buildings and land,” he said. “As such, it has a central role in setting the high- est standards of excellence and envi- ronmental sustainability to maximize the benefits to Canadians, achieve value for money and position Canada as an international leader.” Aecon Group President and CEO Teri McKibbon says he’s looking forward to compet- ing for some of the federal govern- ment’s planned new infrastructure spending. “Obviously, it’s a competitive process,” he told the Business News Network (BNN). “So we have to be successful, we have to have the ap- propriate team in place to be able to target certain projects that we’re inter- ested in.” McKibbon says he expects Aecon will benefit fairly quickly from the new spending, especially for the com- pany’s division focusing on smaller municipal projects. “Those (business units) will re- spond fairly quickly to new investment by municipalities and access to that funding through various vehicles,” he said. “I think six to nine months is a reasonable timeframe for that type of a program to roll out and get ap- provals.” The Canadian Design and Construction Report — November 2015 – 7