Bright Side of Business

The Bright Side of Business is an editorial feature focused on sharing positive stories of business success. The column is presented by Star Motors, Ottawa’s original Mercedes-Benz, Mercedes-AMG and Mercedes Van dealer.

uOttawa grad’s startup named one of Ontario’s top 10 cleantech firms

Belinda Gilbey knows a thing or two about legacies: her father was a mechanical engineer and, following in his footsteps, she went to the University of Ottawa to study the same thing.

“I was there for a number of years, living in the beautiful city, off of the Rideau Canal,” she says. “I would sometimes skate to school; where else can you do that in Ontario?”

But after graduation, Gilbey had other plans for herself. “I really wanted to get in front of customers and learn about sales and marketing,” she recalls.

Gilbey ended up working for a solar racking company, soaking in all she could about renewable energies. From there, she started doing strategic account management for an HVAC company, helping building owners upgrade their systems to become more energy efficient.

Within that organization, Gilbey began spearheading initiatives around heat pump retrofits. In 2019, she met Aaron Graben. At the time, Graben was simply a potential customer who owned and operated his own buildings.

“He encouraged me to quit my job and start a company with him,” Gilbey says. It

uOttawa grad Belinda Gilbey is co-founder of Bondi Energy Corp. PHOTO SUPPLIED.

was good timing, too, as Gilbey had already been toying with the idea of starting her own heat pump retrofitting company. “In life, you have to jump in and just see where the adventure will take you.”

And so Bondi Energy Corp. was created, with Gilbey as co-founder and president. Bondi specializes in installing heat pumps for multi-family unit buildings and commercial properties across North America. The company retrofits electrically heated apartments with heat pumps, reducing carbon footprints.

But what exactly is a heat pump?

“It’s a really energy-efficient type of HVAC equipment that can do both heating and cooling with the same piece of equipment,” Gilbey says. “It effectively pumps heat out of the air and moves it from one space to another.”

Heat pumps have two sections of units: one (or multiple) units go indoors and one goes outdoors. In the wintertime, the equipment pumps heat by moving heat energy from the outside to the inside, through refrigerant. In the summertime, it does the reverse.

In the last two years, Bondi has completed retrofits or has been under contract for almost 1,500 units, with a recent job including a 325-unit building near Bondi’s Toronto office. The building in question had a woefully outdated heating and cooling system, using an old chiller for cooling and electricity for heating.

“We’re really excited to get started,” Gilbey says, adding that, with heat pumps, it’s possible to have different temperatures in different rooms. “It’s going to be a better living experience for the residents.”

She explains that, where electric heat is a huge “energy hog,” heat pumps are three to four times more energy-efficient on the heating side. She adds that buildings are a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, due to burning natural gas for heating and hot water. Because they’re electric, heat pumps are effectively carbon-free, Gilbey says, depending on the source of the electricity.

A CRITICAL MOVE

“If you can switch a gas-heated building to a heat pump, you’ve decarbonized that building and you’ve taken a huge chunk of GHG emissions out of the environment,” Gilbey says — a move that is critical as Canada strives to reach its GHG reduction targets.

Although it’s only been around for a handful of years, Bondi is already thriving, having recently won the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association (OSEA) award for energy efficiency and grid firming. This makes Bondi one of Ontario’s top 10 cleantech companies.

The energy industry is one that’s been historically male-dominated, but Gilbey is proof that is changing. “I’m seeing more and more women in leadership roles and doing good work,” she says. “It has been nothing but positive for me.” — By Nickie Shobeiry

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Accounting firm Crowe BGK cements its Kanata North presence with new March Road location

Gary Connolly, incorporated partner at Crowe BGK LLP

Crowe BGK is no stranger to the Kanata Research Park since it opened its first Ontario location in 2005 – quickly becoming a gem in the west end of Ottawa. The firm was built on the vision of the late Michael McCrann and Clifford Herer, who partnered with wellknown colleagues at Crowe BGK in Montreal to extend the firm to the other end of highway 417. Crowe BGK became one firm with two locations; offering its clients a full suite of services in the areas of audit, accounting, tax and advisory services.

Founded in 1950, Crowe BGK has grown in its two locations to 32 partners and 230 employees, seeing steady growth and increasing success while maintaining it’s founding partners’ core principles of professionalism, service excellence and integrity. The move to its new Kanata office allows the firm to continue to build upon the principles established by its founders.

As a result of continued growth and success, the original Ottawa office no longer met the firms needs. The plans to find a larger and more innovative space were well underway when COVID-19 hit, and the world came to a standstill. After over two years of working fully remote, Crowe BGK welcomed its employees back to its new, bright, state–of–the–art office.

“Our new office space allows us to continue to meet the needs of our current clients while continuing to grow and expand upon our service offerings,” says Gary Connolly, one of the firm’s partners, who spearheaded the search for this new space. “Now that we are in our new space, we will continue to attract top talent and expand our position in the local business community.”

Through attending community and business events alike, Crowe BGK continues its story not only as an accounting firm servicing its clients in a rapidly changing economy but one that gives back where it matters most. In 2018, in honour of Michael McCrann who lost his battle with cancer, the firm started the Crowe BGK Foundation to engage staff and members of the community to help raise funds and awareness towards cancer research, clinical treatments, and cancer coaching.

Crowe BGK is a proud Canadian member of Crowe Global. Crowe Global, ranked among the top 10 global accounting networks, consists of more than 200 independent accounting and advisory services firms in over 145 countries around the world. Crowe Global member firms are known for their local knowledge, expertise and experience balanced by an international reputation for the highest quality of service. Crowe Global offers a broad spectrum of professional services and has built an international reputation in the areas of audit, tax, and advisory services. Member firms are selected for their personal service to privately and publicly held businesses in all sectors.

“As we enter this new chapter, we are excited to continue to welcome clients, both old and new to our new space at 400 March Rd. and continue to show the Ottawa business community what Crowe BGK is all about,” says Connolly.

Carleton and the Bruyère Research Institute are making aging-in-place a reality

We all know our society is aging, but family physicians like Dr. Frank Knoefel – who is dedicated to caring for older Canadians – understands the problem better than most.

Knoefel has been a family physician and expert in the Care of the Elderly with Bruyère for 27 years, and currently holds the University of Ottawa Brain and Mind-Bruyère Research Institute Chair in Primary Health Care Dementia Research.

When he started, aging-inplace wasn’t always an option. “I wanted to ensure my patients didn’t end up back in hospital two weeks after I discharged them,” said Knoefel. “But it was hard to get timely and sufficient home care.”

When Knoefel heard from friends about new-fangled technology they were using to automate their homes, it gave him an idea — but he needed a Carleton University professor, computer engineer and smarttechnology expert like Rafik Goubran to make it happen.

Goubran, now Carleton’s Vice-President (Research and International), was receptive and soon Knoefel was co-supervising Goubran’s engineering students who were researching smart technology.

Together they built a foundation of knowledge by publishing more than 200 articles and training dozens of students. It was an essential step before “getting down to brass tacks” as Knoefel likes to say to transfer that knowledge to the real world.

The Carleton U and Bruyère Research Institute smart apartment In 2003, Knoefel and Barbara Schulman, former vice-president, planning and partnerships of the SCO health service, co-founded a multidisciplinary program called Technology Assisted Friendly Environment for the Third Age (TAFETA), which was designed to connect public and private companies working on aging-inplace solutions.

With help from partners such as the Dementia Society of Ottawa and Renfrew County and the National Research Council of Canada, several research projects involving smart-health technology have taken place – including the creation of the first TAFETA Smart Apartment which opened at the Élisabeth Bruyère Hospital in 2005.

The apartment was established as the program’s test site for the integration and testing of smart age-tech solutions for real-world applications, many of which are being designed by Carleton University students.

In one scenario, the team created a smart-home solution for a gentleman living with dementia who often wandered during the night.

Pressure and motion sensors were used to activate smart lights that guided him to the bathroom, and if he accidentally went to the kitchen instead of back to bed, he heard his wife’s voice gently reminding him where to go through a wireless speaker.

The impact was huge. After their first pilot project with 16 families, no one wanted to return the technology. Dr Goubran reflects on this success explaining that “often solutions can be relatively simple from an engineering perspective but the impact on people’s wellbeing is significant”.

From left: Heidi Sveistrup, Dr. Frank Knoefel and Chantal Trudel

Today’s Carleton-Bruyère team is a well-oiled machine “Our group is well past the honeymoon phase,” said Heidi Sveistrup, CEO and chief scientific officer at the Bruyère Research Institute.

One of the people Sveistrup can call with the push of a button is Chantal Trudel, director of the Centre for Community Engagement and associate professor in Industrial Design at Carleton. Her role is to look at aging-in-place both in the home and in the community.

“Transportation is how seniors keep in touch with their friends and families,” said Trudel, noting that an industrial designer’s approach goes beyond hightech solutions like self-driving technology and into the design of systems and operations.

Sveistrup adds that as a leading academic institution, Carleton has been a valuable partner in providing research expertise and trainees to tackle aging-in-place.

As the work between the hospital and university continues, there’s no denying the original partnership between two persevering groups laid the foundation for significant progress.