Community Benefit Agreements

How can construction and infrastructure best create social value for communities?

Community Benefit Agreements

The basics: A Community Benefit Agreement (CBA) is an agreement on infrastructure and development projects to achieve social value outcomes such as inclusive hiring, skills training, local procurement, and social procurement.

More detail: A Community Benefit Agreement (CBA) is a legal agreement or contractual requirement on construction, infrastructure and development projects for specific social value outcomes like inclusive hiring, skills training, or local and social procurement that ensures projects enhance social, cultural, environmental, and economic opportunities for and with community.

Buy Social Canada acknowledges that having community as a signatory on a CBA is an important part of historical and some current CBAs. Our definition is broader than that to acknowledge models that don’t have community as a partner but are designed to benefit community. We encourage all CBAs to work with community as much as possible to ensure outcomes align with community goals and opportunities.

Our tools and resources provide further insights into designing, implementing and succeeding in Community Benefit Agreements & Community Employment Benefits.

Key opportunity areas:

Employment
Skills and training
Social value in the supply chain
Community development

Examples:

Infrastructure Canada Community Employment Benefits
City of Vancouver CBA Policy
City of Toronto CBA Framework

CBA Tools

Certified Social Enterprise: Embers

CBA Introduction Video

Learn about Community Benefit Agreements and hear from municipal and construction sector leaders, the CIty of Surrey and Chandos Construction.

Training

Social Procurement in Construction: Community Benefit Agreements

Participants learn about the concepts of community benefit agreements (CBA) and an overview of the steps to integrate into the design, build and operations phases of development projects.