North America’s first zero-carbon office tower

opens in Vancouver

Vancouver’s tallest commercial building, The Stack, is raising the environmental bar in the city. The building is the first office tower to attain the Canada Green Building Council’s Zero Carbon Building – Design standard certification and the first high-rise commercial tower in North America built to zero carbon standards. The Stack is co-owned by Oxford Properties Group and CPP Investments.

Designed by Vancouver-based architect James K.M. Cheng, the 37-storey, AAA-class 550,000 sq. ft. office tower is situated in a premium location in the city’s downtown, enhancing the city’s skyline with its unique twisting, stacked box design.

By achieving zero carbon status, The Stack also plays an important part in the progress of the City of Vancouver and Province of British Columbia’s 2030 zero-carbon goals as the building makes use of innovative features that minimize both carbon emissions and energy intensity, including low carbon building systems and a high-performance triple-pane glazing system.

It also deploys smart building technology to provide insights on energy management to optimize building performance. On-site renewable energy is achieved through a rooftop photovoltaic solar panel array that will generate 26,000 kWh of energy annually.

“We’re incredibly proud to deliver a building that creates economic and social value for the city of Vancouver, and actively contributes to our partners and customers’ ESG goals,” commented

Canadian firms expect stable or growing backlog

Seventy per cent of Canadian civil and infrastructure construction companies expect their project backlog to be stable or increase over the next year as new federal infrastructure funding ramps up, says a report released by Procore Technologies and the Associated General Contractors of America.

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The report, Top Civil & Infrastructure Trends: Today’s Industry Challenges and Opportunities, found that many companies are worried that labour shortages and productivity challenges could undermine their success with these projects, however.

“With increased backlogs prompted by once-in-a-generation government investment in the U.S. and Canada, civil and infrastructure organizations are on the cusp of seeing a tremendous growth in projects,” said Nolan Frazier, regional sales director for Canada at Procore.

Canadian builders report an average increase of 38 per cent in their backlogs since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sharing tech: Meeting jobsite needs with classroom partnerships

As the construction industry embraces technology at an incredible pace, so too are the training schools that are preparing the next generation of the industry’s workforce. By working with technology companies, these schools are attracting young people interested in digital applications while preparing them for the realities of modern job sites.

“With our journeyperson training, we’re always trying to add additional technology pieces into it and update how we’re going about teaching,” stated Reva Bond, dean of SAIT’s School of Construction, during a recent interview about the incorporation of Procore’s platform into its programs. She explained that one of the goals is to have students emerge from school ready to roll with the technology skills employers are in need of on their job sites.

“We’re using augmented reality in our trades training, so the apprentices put on their goggles and they can see the whole overlay of the plumbing, for example,” she said, adding that these modern tools increase the speed and accuracy at which students can put things together, leading to better results on trade qualification exams.

“There’s a lot of technology coming along,” concurs Arjun Pandey a professor at George Brown’s Angelo DelZotto School of Construction Management. “We have lots of cutting-edge tools.”

While many of the construction training programs at the college or university levels are software- and brand-agnostic, the ability to partner with suppliers to the industry is providing a number of benefits to all parties in the equation, from the schools, to the students, to the manufacturers, and ultimately to the employers, who are able to hire graduates who know the systems that are actually used on jobsites.

SAIT and George Brown are two of the 11 schools in Canada, and more than 250 around the world, that have partnered to make the Procore platform available to their students.

“I’ve been at SAIT since 2009, and every year our budget gets smaller and smaller. And I have had to say goodbye to software because we just can’t afford it anymore,” said Bond. “What’s fantastic about Procore is its commitment to education. They see the value. We receive the software free of charge, which frees us up to really explore the whole suite and everything it has to offer.”

Students who register through school programs like the one at SAIT gain full access, with full functionality. “Lots of times if you get an educational license, you only have access to bits and pieces and things are turned off. Procore doesn’t do that,” she said. “They recognize that this is a learning space, and to emulate the real world you need access to everything.”

That starts with becoming certified in the program.

“They can certify themselves as a certified proper user,” explained Pandey. “And once they have it they come into the class, they can create RFI and their assignments.”

He sees access to the software as a win-win. “We are helping Procore by teaching the students who then go to job sites where they ask for the technology. The other side is that Procore is giving us the free licenses so that we can use it and practice. It is a good partnership example.”

“Recognizing this opportunity to donate our software to colleges and universities that had construction management programs –all of the credit goes to our customers, who were making us keenly aware of the time and energy they had to spend onboarding new hires,” stated Sasha Reed, director of industry advancement at Procore.org “It was really at the request of our customers to get our software not only in front of universities and colleges, but really to get us into the curriculum … so that students would graduate Procore-ready.”

This ability to be ready to roll for an employer is paying off for some SAIT students, says Bond. “When I’ve seen them graduate … they’re being put into quite high BIM coordinator roles,” she stated.

“The intention really is if we can have the professors have access to the technology, as they’re teaching the principles around construction management, there’s a technology component that’s introduced fairly early,” said Reed. “That should do two things: one, it excites students about getting involved in a career that shows some sustainability into the future by having technology as a component, but I think the second piece too, is really reducing the burden of on ramping once you get into that new role.”

A selection of data reflecting trends in the Canadian construction industry

Construction Investment Takes A Summertime Hit

Investment in building construction dropped 2.6 per cent in July, falling to $17.5 billion, but the losses were not across the board, reports Statistics Canada in its latest investment in building construction report. Although the residential sector decreased 4.1 per cent to land at $11.5 billion, the non-residential sector found itself up by a half-per-cent, coming in at $5.9 billion.

Institutional investment led growth in the non-residential sector, rising by 1.2 per cent to hit $1.5 billion on the strength of a new hospital project in Dawson Creek, B.C. Investment in the industrial component rebounded with a slight, 0.6 increase to $1.2 billion, while commercial investment edged up 0.3 per cent to $3.3 billion. Overall, investment gains across the three non-residential segments were paced by increases in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Six provinces posted contractions.

Construction Employment Flat

Permits Dip After Strong June

A high value of hospital permits issued in June made July’s month-to-month comparison look weak in comparison, but July’s year-over-year performance in most tracked segments showed gains in values in the latest building permit figures released by Statistics Canada.

Looking across all segments, the total monthly value of building permits in Canada declined 1.5 per cent in July, despite a monthly gain of 5.4 per cent in the residential sector. This past July’s consolidated figures landed at $11.7 billion, a gain of almost a half-billion over the same month last year as permit values came in 4.4 per cent higher than July of 2022.

The total monthly value of non-residential permits dipped by 11.5 per cent to $4.3 billion in July, as strength in the institutional component in June saw that segment fall by almost 20 per cent, to $1.3 billion. Construction intentions in the commercial component were also down, falling 10.8 per cent to $1.9 billion, while the industrial component posted a more modest decline, feeling a one per cent shave to come in at $1.1 billion. On a year-over-year basis, July’s permit values in the non-residential sector are up almost 15 per cent over what was reported in July of 2022.

The dial barely moved on construction employment in July, according to the Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours from Statistics Canada. The sector lost about 500 jobs compared to June, leaving 1,175,400 people working in construction. That was 3.4 per cent more workers than July of 2022, however; a rise of more than 38,000 positions. The construction sector had almost 62,000 positions available to be filled in July, placing it fourth amongst all industry sectors represented in the survey. The job vacancy rate for construction came in at five per cent for the month. On a monthover-month basis, average weekly earnings in the construction sector posted a gain of 1.6 per cent to come in at $1,509.

Total Employment in Canada

20,206,000 Unemployment Rate

5.5%

Construction Employment

1,654,200