SBIPS, in plain words

Solutions-Based Informatics Professional Services Supply Arrangement

What it gates

Informatics professional services bought as a solution rather than as named people on tasks, for federal departments and agencies, above the Canada–Korea Free Trade Agreement threshold for services - CA$100,000 for 2026 and 2027. The supplier defines the solution, manages the project and answers for the outcome; each requirement is expected to show initiation, planning and execution, and may carry essential goods. Mandatory above the threshold. Below it a department may still use SBIPS - under $40,000 by direct award to a holder - but ProServices is the mandatory door there.

How it is divided

By tier, stream and region. Tier 1 covers requirements up to and including $4.5 million and Tier 2 anything above, since amendment 002 of 31 July 2026 raised the line from $3.75 million. Eleven streams: business transformation, ERP and CRM, electronic service delivery, geospatial informatics, information management and business intelligence, IT systems management, legacy support and transition, managed services, network services, security management, and systems integration. Regions are Atlantic, Quebec, National Capital, Ontario, Pacific and Western, each with metropolitan areas, plus remote access. A supplier picks a tier per stream and the regions it serves, and Tier 1 requests above the threshold go to at least fifteen holders, ten named and five drawn at random by CPSS.

How you get on it

1. Meet the corporate tests: gross sales of at least $250,000 in the last fiscal year, three years in business as the same legal entity by the quarter's closing, and for Tier 2 commercial general liability insurance of $2,000,000 at closing. Tier 1 asks for no insurance, and no security clearance is needed to hold the arrangement; each request for proposals sets its own, and SBIPS no longer sponsors screenings.
2. Name exactly three solution-based IT projects per stream claimed, for outside clients, completed within three years of closing. Your firm must have held the whole contract, professional services must be at least 70% of each project's value, each must show initiation, planning and execution, and the three together must total $1.5 million for Tier 1 or $6 million for Tier 2.
3. Give one reference per project. PSPC checks each by email, once, with no follow-up, and one non-compliant project fails the whole stream. The reference's readiness to answer is the single largest risk in the submission.
4. Enrol in the Centralized Professional Services System with your CRA business number and SAP Business Network ID, and submit online through its data collection component against the open request (EN537-05IT01). Documents go by email only if asked, with two working days to answer a clarification. There is no deficiency cycle: a stream that fails is re-entered next quarter, and the system blocks a new submission until the previous result is published.

When it reopens

Continuously open to 4 July 2028, evaluated by fiscal quarter - April to June, July to September, October to December, January to March - with arrangements issued about three months after each close. Holders do not resubmit to keep their status; they submit again only to add a tier, stream or region. Once issued, the arrangement carries a quarterly usage report, nil reports included, due on the fifteenth of July, October, January and April; a missed report can suspend it.

Why this is the harder of the two informatics doors

TBIPS asks whether your people fit a category. SBIPS asks whether your firm has delivered whole solutions, three times, recently, at a size that adds up. The tests are pass or fail with no points to earn back: a project that was 60% services, or 90% yours, or completed 37 months ago, fails the stream, and one failed project fails all three.

That is also why it is worth holding. A firm that clears the bar is in a smaller pool, competing for work that a time-and-materials shop cannot be invited to, and the strengthened measures are steering the largest IT requirements onto exactly this vehicle.

Why firms get this wrong

Claiming too many streams. Each stream needs its own three projects, and the same project can carry more than one stream only if it genuinely was that kind of work. Two streams with clean projects beat six with borrowed ones.

A reference who does not answer. PSPC writes once. A reference on leave, gone to another employer, or unsure what the email is about fails the project and the stream. Choose references who know they are references, and tell them when the email will land.

What we can see, and what we cannot

PSPC does not publish the SBIPS holder list as a whole, and the open standing offers and supply arrangements dataset carries no SBIPS rows at all. It does publish each supply arrangement it awards, one record at a time, in the CanadaBuys contract-history dataset - a row titled “SBIPS SA – firm” with the date. So when a report of ours says your firm does not hold SBIPS, two things have been checked: no arrangement award under the vehicle names your firm, and no contract under an arrangement in the stream names it either. The record begins in 2019; a firm qualified before that may not appear in it. If you already hold the arrangement, tell us and the report is wrong.