Siksika Nation develops strategic approach to improve condition of housing supply

Located 95 kilometres east of Calgary, Siksika Nation is growing quickly, and there is a shortage of safe and quality housing. Existing homes require significant work to bring them up to living standard, and more homes need to be built to accommodate the growing population. Many Elders and residents live in homes requiring repairs or renovations to address safety and health concerns.

The community prioritized Elders' units and multi-generational homes in which Elders reside for the pilot project. Elders represent the most vulnerable members of the community. Focusing on Elders’ needs first improves safety and well-being for Elders and respects Elders who play a key role in Indigenous Communities, passing on their knowledge and cultural principles.

The Nation needed to identify what work needed to be done, create a strategy (with limited funds and need for transparency) to conduct the required maintenance, and manage the ongoing repairs.

The Siksika Nation Housing Department provides and maintains the Nation’s public housing for approximately 1,235 homes. In 2022, the Housing Department completed over 200 inspections of Elders’ homes with the help of home inspection firms, whose comprehensive reports detailed recommendations for repairs.

The Housing Department has limited funding and labour resources to meet the community's needs, and also faces capacity constraints. The Department engaged Associated Engineering to assist with developing an efficient and cost-effective action plan, and provide project management support for the first phase of the Elders’ Homes Repair Program. In addition to assisting with the repair program, we helped the Housing Department with strategic planning, and developed tools to help build internal capacity to plan and budget future work.

Project Manager, Abu Waraich, tells us, "Our work included a significant data management component. The home inspection reports contained a large amount of information in text form. Converting this text to a useable form required creating programming scripts to extract and process over 5,000 recommendations from the inspection reports."

The home inspection reports were completed almost two years ago. The reports assigned priorities to all of the recommendations, so risks to the safety of the residents could be addressed first. However, since the inspections, some of the information in the reports were outdated, and in many cases the condition of different components became worse.

Abu says, "With digitization of the data in the reports, the priorities assigned to different repairs could be modified as new information became available, allowing the project team to quickly pivot and allocate funds within the project budget to the highest risk homes and items. Items which had lower risk to residents could be assigned lower urgency and can be addressed in future phases."

Our team worked closely with the Housing Department to ensure that they were involved in the development and rollout of plans and tools. When developing the costing spreadsheet to help operations staff estimate the cost of completing repairs and maintenance, Associated worked closely with Housing Department staff and a cost consultant so they could understand the new approach to costing and incorporated their feedback to make the tool as user friendly as possible.

During the repairs and renovations, Associated kept residents informed about the repair work. Project team member, Jorey Robin, says, "We worked hard to establish a rapport with residents. Along with the contractor and the Siksika Housing Department, we met with Elders to describe the work being completed on their homes and explained the phased approach."

Associated is currently reviewing and organizing the various Housing Capital Programs and identifying where the Nation could improve their data management so that they can improve how they manage projects and funding/grant applications.

Our key personnel on the project are Abu Waraich, Jorey Robin, and Craig MacDonald.