Measuring the Benefits of Social Procurement in the Canadian Construction Industry

Thank you for considering participating in this Simon Fraser University Urban Studies research project examining the construction industry's use of different labour suppliers and temp workers with barriers to employment. The research measures common acts of construction on your job site so we can understand the productivity of workers from various labour suppliers. As a supervisor you are being asked to provide a brief assessment on a small number of workers that you supervised on a given day.

Your employer or contracting construction company has provided the SFU research team with permission for us to contact you. However, your participation is entirely voluntarily and has no bearing or effect on your relationship to your employer, and no information that you provide will be shared with the employer, or connected back to you in any way.

The 3 minute survey may be completed once, or several times on different days, to track multiple workers and acts of construction. If you have many workers under your supervision please randomize your surveys to every 3rd or 10th worker, for example. Always use that random number as you complete new surveys about your crew each day. The more surveys completed, the more comprehensive the research will be. Your responses to our survey about workers under your supervision is confidential, so there is no risk to participating. Your responses will not identify your employer, organization or your name in any presentation of results.

We will provide Keg Steakhouse restaurant gift cards ($100 value) as a token of our appreciation to five randomly selected participants who submit a survey or questionnaire. Every submission represents one chance at receiving the gift certificate.

This study is part of a SFU Urban Studies research project contracted by Buy Social Canada. Separately, if you choose to volunteer, you can also request to be interviewed or share your recorded image or written feedback about your experience.

Possible benefits of this research to the construction industry is that it will provide feedback on productivity levels of workers sourced from different labour suppliers. This will contribute to better informed hiring practices, workers' performance and retention, and increased knowledge of measuring productivity on job sites. The benefit of this research to Canada's construction industry includes improving how social procurement is managed throughout the construction cycle, benefiting individual workers, crews, companies, and communities.This online survey is hosted by SurveyMonkey, which is U.S. owned. As such, while any data you provide will be transmitted and stored in Survey Monkey's Canadian servers (see link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/legal/canadian-data-centre-overview/) it is nevertheless subject to the USA Patriot Act and CLOUD Act. We encourage you to read the security and privacy policy for the web survey company at the following link: [https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/legal/privacy-policy/] If you agree to participate in this survey, you can withdraw from the study without explanation at any time. If, after completing the survey, you decide you would like to withdraw your results from the study, you may do so by emailing info@buildsocial.ca. The same is true if you agree to an interview.

The researchers may use your survey results or interview for a future phase of research beyond the current scope described in this consent form. All of this information can be further explained at your convenience. You may also contact Dr. Jeff Toward, Director, Office of Research Ethics at jtoward@sfu.ca, 778-782-6593 with questions relating to rights of research participants or to register any complaint.