Q&A WITH VICA CEO RORY KULMALA

With the many challenges we’ve been faced with this year, both in the industry and beyond, how do organizations and businesses evolve in order to increase agility and resilience?

Flexibility and the ability to adapt. Ultimately, adopting or creating new processes that fit around this paradigm is the current measure of success and survival. At the beginning of the pandemic, construction was deemed an essential service, so the industry was forced to create new processes in order to continue working.

There’s a whole realm of factors influencing the ecosystem of construction, material and labour shortages, supply chain disruptions, and the traditional attitude of doing things the way they’ve always been done. Necessity is the mother of invention. So, we are compelled to evolve and embrace technology and innovations. The element that allows us to be successful is that companies are being agile, flexible, and they are accepting adaptability rather than resisting it.

As business environments change and social networking evolves, what efforts are being made and - what efforts are necessary - to reach the marketplace and make important connections?

Technology has been our most important tool. It’s hasn’t always been ideal, but most people would rather have a meeting over Zoom than not have that meeting at all. We’ve been able to maintain business and forge personal connections through innovation, and it’s become a necessity to maintain all kinds of partnerships. It’s also provoking people to explore new skills and continue to seek out and learn new things.

What are some key initiatives VICA will introduce or promote in 2022, why are they important now?

We have been able to pivot our education opportunities to an online environment to keep those offerings accessible to our members. We have a great suite of professional development and industryspecific training and education, and we look forward to bringing back the in-person training and events.

We are continuing our Construct Your Future programs in Victoria and Nanaimo in response to our sector’s need for people. We were fortunate to have our funding extended for our Victoria program, and we launched CYF in Nanaimo last year which is going well. So far, we have been able to place over 100 people into our sector.

Our latest innovative service is our harm-reduction initiative. The Tailgate Toolkit is taking us out of what a typical construction association does, but we are amidst an opioid crisis that is impacting our workforce. We launched the initiative in September 2021, and it’s been expanded to the province, so we are working with our regional construction associations to deliver. We have received national exposure on this program and, as a humble Vancouver Island construction association, we’re mindful that our priority is to deliver to our province and that’s what we’re going to focus on.

We’ve been working on a community of practice with our island-based municipalities on providing a place where they can discuss construction-related procurement topics. We are also involved with the social procurement hub, which started on Vancouver Island and has expanded throughout the province. So, we’re also supporting that initiative on a provincial level.

We have been able to pivot our education opportunities to an online environment to keep those offerings accessible to our members. “ “

What advice do you have for members (or anyone) for navigating through the coming year?

Be patient, flexible, and cautious. We will return to some level of normal, but I think that could take longer that we anticipate. Our sector has been extremely resilient through this, and we have fared much better than other sectors, but it hasn’t come without cost; we are all feeling the impact. We are stressed and we are overworked. Things are not looking to slow down in construction and finding talent will remain a challenge as will supply chain issues. But it may create new opportunities, so we must learn from this to create resiliency and stability in our communities.

In terms of advocacy, what is your focus for the next 12 months?

We are facing a housing crisis on the island, and the construction community is a big part of the solution, but we are often not consulted or given an adequate voice when discussing solutions.

Legislation and bylaws are being introduced that are counterintuitive to development, and that further stresses demand and effectively turns into hurdles for our sector. So we are working toward getting a seat at the table when discussing construction bylaws. We are looking for support and collaboration from our local governments that will help get our communities and infrastructure built. n

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