Indigenous-Partnership Delivery Model Director

The mandate

The developer has negotiated different participation, employment, procurement, information and monitoring commitments across a growing project portfolio. Delivery teams interpret similar obligations differently, and community partners must repeatedly rebuild working relationships as projects move from development to construction and operation. The defined problem is not to standardise Nations or agreements; it is to create an internal operating model that honours distinct commitments, locates decisions clearly and makes performance visible without reducing partnership to compliance reporting.

The principal deliverable is a co-designed partnership delivery model covering lifecycle ownership, community interfaces, consent and agreement dependencies, procurement pathways, workforce commitments, environmental participation, information stewardship, issue resolution, executive escalation and learning across projects. It will include a commitment taxonomy, role-and-rights map, transition protocol, evidence standard, governance calendar, performance narrative and implementation backlog. Nation-specific terms remain controlling, while repeatable company practices remove avoidable friction and lost institutional memory.

Five milestones pace the work. By week four, the team completes listening and agreement-to-practice mapping with participating partners. Week eight provides current-state failure analysis and principles approved by the partnership council. At week twelve, two project simulations test the target roles through construction mobilisation and an unexpected impact concern. Week sixteen closes regional adaptation; week twenty delivers the final model, transition toolkits, capability requirements and executive adoption decision. Payment follows the accepted output at each milestone.

Acceptance belongs jointly to the chief development officer and the Indigenous Partnerships Council, including nominated participating-community members under their own governance processes. Completion requires traceability from sampled commitments to an accountable decision owner, partner validation that engagement pathways are usable, project-director confirmation that escalation works under schedule pressure and a documented treatment for disagreement. Consensus on every policy preference is not required, but unresolved differences, rights and dependencies must remain visible rather than being edited away.

The client will provide governing agreements, commitment registers, project plans, prior review findings, incident and grievance evidence, procurement and workforce data, internal sponsors and funded participation arrangements for agreed partner sessions. Consultants will not interpret treaty or legal rights, speak for any Nation, renegotiate agreements, obtain consent, select suppliers, award benefits or replace relationship holders. Project-specific negotiation, legal advice and implementation beyond month five are expressly excluded from the engagement.

Why this is external work

Project teams are under delivery pressure and inherit practices shaped by their own agreements, making neutral comparison difficult. Community partners have also experienced repeated internal reorganisations and reasonably distrust another company-authored framework. External facilitation can create a bounded co-design process, preserve divergent evidence and deliver a usable internal accountability system without claiming to represent Indigenous perspectives or legal rights.

What you will own

• Map sampled commitments from agreement language through development, construction, operation, evidence and partner experience.
• Facilitate partner-defined success criteria and preserve differences among Nations, projects, rights and relationship histories.
• Design lifecycle decision rights, named interfaces, transition duties and escalation paths for company accountability through delivery.
• Test the model through mobilisation and impact scenarios with community and project participants observing handoffs.
• Specify procurement, workforce, environmental, information and issue-resolution evidence without creating reductive scorekeeping.
• Record disagreements, legal dependencies, partner-governance requirements and implementation risks in the adoption decision.
• Deliver role guides, commitment tools, capability needs, governance calendar and a funded mobilisation backlog.

Candidate qualifications

• Has co-designed infrastructure delivery practices with Indigenous Nations or communities across more than one project lifecycle.
• Can evidence changes to internal decision rights, procurement or project transitions resulting from partner participation.
• Understands agreement implementation, information stewardship, capacity funding, engagement continuity and project-delivery pressure.
• Has facilitated contested issues without presenting themselves as a legal interpreter or community representative.
• Can build repeatable company accountability while preserving Nation-specific rights, governance and relationship context.
• Brings independence from bidders, developers or advisers whose commercial interests could distort model recommendations.

Non-negotiables

• Will follow participating communities’ protocols, governance, access conditions and expectations for compensated involvement.
• Can complete field sessions where invited and will not substitute Toronto workshops for relationship evidence.
• Has direct partnership-delivery experience; stakeholder communications or generic ESG consulting alone is inadequate.
• Will preserve disagreement and legal dependencies rather than manufacture apparent consensus for executive convenience.

1. 49 words maximum. How have you translated a distinct community commitment into a repeatable internal decision practice without standardising the partner?
2. 49 words maximum. What evidence tells you that a partnership operating model is usable under construction schedule pressure?
3. 49 words maximum. Which commercial relationships would you disclose before facilitating this portfolio’s co-design process?