The health, safety, and well-being of all RAIC stakeholders—including the board of directors, staff, volunteers, and participants—is foremost on our minds, and so the RAIC is proactively taking steps to do our part to minimize the spread of COVID-19.

The RAIC is closely monitoring the current situation via the Public Health Agency of Canada and the World Health Organization—and will make decisions based on the information provided.

As such, the following information reflects the changes to ongoing events, operations, and services provided by the RAIC and how they are impacted by COVID-19.

Additionally, information related to COVID-19 will be posted—and updated—here.

Starting March 16, 2020, the RAIC has temporarily suspended all work-related travel for all board directors, staff, volunteers, and representatives until further notice. This will be re-evaluated daily.

Rest assured, our team is focusing on staying healthy, not travelling, maintaining a positive attitude, and doing our part during this public health emergency. We are confident we have taken considerable action so far to protect the RAIC and its stakeholders—and we are actively reviewing in-person activities taking place in April, May, and June.

We will provide regular updates through the bulletin, website, and social platforms.

On Friday, March 13, 2020, RAIC CEO Mike Brennan announced that the head office facility would be closed temporarily for two weeks and launched a remote working capacity for all staff. Working remotely is a viable option for RAIC staff who are equipped with the necessary tools so that disruption to RAIC activities can be minimized.

The RAIC Staff Directory is available here in the event that you need to contact one of our staff members directly. Please note—email is the preferred way to contact RAIC staff during this time.

The RAIC is working diligently to transition all continuing education to a virtual platform and will provide updates directly to participants of any in-person activities that were scheduled to take place up until March 31, 2020.

As of now, all Continuing Education workshops that were previously scheduled to be in-person—until May 30, 2020—will be transitioned to a virtual platform. Upcoming bulletins and notices will provide additional information on specific continuing education workshops, sessions, and opportunities.

At this time, there are currently no plans for the RAIC to cancel or postpone the Conference on Architecture as a result of COVID-19. We continue to move forward with running the event.

We are committed to continuing to be informed about the ongoing situation at both the local and global levels—and the RAIC will share Conference updates via emails to our distribution list and on the event website.

To support the need for planning flexibility among participants, the RAIC has extended the early bird registration rate to April 17 and will keep online registration open until May 15.

In the event that the Conference on Architecture is cancelled, the RAIC will implement a flexible cancellation policy, including the option of a 100% refund.

Any questions or concerns, please e-mail us at info@raic.org.

Mike Brennan, CEO