Industry & Trades Jan 2018 by Prince George Citizen

Industry And trades January 2018

PAGE 12

Timber-frame building PAGE 8

NASA technology sniffs out B.C. greenhouse gasses Product of

helps local First Nation and environment

www.pgcitizen.ca | Thursday, January 25, 2018

Inside Natural resources are B.C.’s economic star chamber.................................. pg 3 Picking and choosing........... pg 4 Local bridge getting multi-million-dollar upgrades................................. pg 5 Local prof’s career climbing with tall wood structures.................... pg 6 NASA technology sniffs out B.C. greenhouse gasses............... pg 8 PG farms and kitchens heating up together........... pg 10 Timber-frame building helps local First Nation and environment..................pg 12 BDC sees opportunity in baby-boomer business................................. pg 14

Cover photo: Timber frames used to build the the Alkali Lake Recover Centre (see story page 12).Photo courtesy of Zirnhelt Timber Frames Ltd.

Please Recycle

Thursday, January 25, 2018

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Natural resources are B.C.’s economic

Star chamber Written by Frank Peebles The president and CEO of the BC Chamber of Commerce sees northern B.C. as a major economic factor in the whole province’s fortunes. Val Litwin was in attendance at the True North Business Development Forum organized by the Prince George branch of the chamber, and supported by Northern Development Initiative Trust. It provided the audience with access to some of the province’s leading economic thinkers, and government leaders as well. “A conversation we are having at the provincial level is the synergies between the rural and the urban in the province, and that isn’t always about geography,” he said. “We need a venue where we can talk about the north, and not always talk about the Lower Mainland. We need to be looking at the ways natural resource projects interface with the mainstream economy, and yes that has a lot to do with the Lower Mainland’s relationship with the bulk of the province where the forestry and mining and oil and gas work is being done. But it’s also about urban locations very much like Prince George is, as well, and the way regional cities and rural communities impact each other back and forth. The more we know about that, the better we can build in resilience and sustainability for those business interactions over time.” What he and his chamber colleagues are also addressing with this line of thinking is the interplay between major corporations and the small/medium businesses that take part in the natural resource economies that fuel the engines of the province. Litwin said it was important to see the relationship clearly. Too many people think, he explained, that the big projects bestow economic opportunity down to the small/medium businesses around the area of the mine or mill, but in reality it is the capacity of those small/medium businesses that often determine the viability of the big proponent company’s dreams. By way of simplistic example: if there is no one to provide

lunch every day for 100 millworkers, you can’t very well move in a crew. “To make a distinction between large and small businesses in B.C. is a bit of a misnomer, because the small and medium business of the province really do power the larger corporations who lead the major projects,” Litwin said. “The major proponent company handles a lot of the initial investment, they do the heavy lifting to establish where a mine should go or where the natural gas drilling should take place, but they also have to calculate all the details before they can go ahead with a project, like where all their goods and services and labour force will come from. That takes a community of other businesses to be in place or to be ready to set up. So we’re talking about the importance of overall economic capacity, from region to region.” The help major proponents and small/ medium businesses can offer each other is a constantly moving target, when an economy is healthy. Litwin said he expects the coming year to have its share of challenges and setbacks, but also anticipates there will be innovations and new opportunities that will spark business in the northern region in specific. “There is always a ripple effect when a natural resource industry moves forward on a project, so that’s why we are hopeful for a final investment decision on a northern LNG proposal in the 2018 calendar year,” he said. “We want and are hopeful that some of those projects will go forward in the near future, and then how does small and medium business capitalize and take part in those large projects, and plug into that enterprise?”

Val Litwin, President and CEO of the BC Chamber of Commerce. Submitted photo

www.pgcitizen.ca | Thursday, January 25, 2018

Picking And Choosing Get more forest value from selective logging: Pro Forester Written by Frank Peebles The way is clear cut, for Prince George forester Jacek Bankowski, and it is not the clearcut. The Registered Professional Forester with a Master of Science in Forestry (Silviculture) degree works in the public sector but on his own initiative he did a research project on the practice of cutting all the trees in a given area then replanting them and moving on to the next block. That’s the overwhelming habit of the northern B.C. boreal forest logging industry. It is called clearcutting, and it has its place, said Bankowski, who wrote an essay offering a different view for the latest edition of his profession’s peer magazine. “Why is clearcutting the predominant silvicultural system used in British Columbia, despite the fact that we have a variety of shade-tolerant tree species, as well as both even-aged and uneven-aged stand structures?,” he wrote. “We have lost over 50 per cent of the mature pine in BC and there is no doubt that clearcutting was the appropriate silvicultural system in managing this shade intolerant species with its even-aged stand structure. The creation of large (thousands of hectares) openings as a result of clearcutting for mountain pine beetle could

not be avoided. However, resulting negative ecosystem changes are reflected in the loss of landscape-level diversity and wildlife habitat. Fortunately, we still have a significant area left with shade tolerant species, such as spruce and fir in BC. We should be asking ourselves if we can utilize a form of partial-cutting for these shade tolerant species instead of allowing a clearcutting approach, with its known negative consequences.” The alternative Bankowski advocates for chiefly is the selective logging or partial-cut method. It requires a larger parcel of land to gather in the logging company’s desired volume, but it allows for much more sustainable harvesting plans and a healthier overall forest, as you can target any trees infested with a pest like the Mountain Pine Beetle or the Spruce Bark Beetle, trees damaged by fire or blowdown, etc. The cost of silviculture is also reduced because natural regeneration and the nearly ready trees left behind fill in the forest more quickly than manual replanting, and the forest grows according to its own natural tendencies. Bankowski said the essay was “what I wanted to say because it is a neglected topic” but the idea isn’t new and has been tested in Canada before.

The industry’s leading research and technology agency, FP Innovations, ran a case study in Quebec. “Data from FP Innovations in Quebec shows the costs of harvesting in a first entry shelterwood cut amounts to $1.87 per cubic metre more than if a clearcutting system was used,” he said. “However, the higher costs are largely compensated for by the higher value of harvested trees with partial cutting systems.” In British Columbia there was also some past history in the form of the Aleza Lake Research Forest right here near Prince George. Horse loggers have always been partial to selective logging, as their equine equipment can easily slip between the trees intended for further growth. But any forest harvesting company bigger than mom-and-pop size is built on a business plan of heavy machinery. Can the kind of selective logging Bankowski is talking about be done by the major operators? And still turn a profit? “Yes,” he said, citing the numbers crunched by FP Innovations from their trials in Quebec. “They did economical assessments, and it is economical, but there’s not been much of that work done in B.C. What I recommended was for a pilot project in B.C. but someone has to take the initiative.” A larger tree farm license is a perfect testing site, but it does have to exhibit the mix of tree species and ages to ensure proper data comes out of such an experiment. Learning on the fly (but implementing global practices from jurisdictions already utilizing this practice) may be the way to go in this area,

since the forest industry is in the bite of the mid-term shortfall – the gap of time between the mass killing of mature pine by the Mountain Pine Beetle and the new crop of pine growing in. With large wildfires and now the Spruce Bark Beetle also getting its jaws on the local forest, mills and the full spectrum of forestry worker is under tremendous economic challenge. A more efficient harvesting cycle may help. “This area is quite stressed with shortages of timber supply. It’s dropping. So you have to do everything possible so this drop is not exaggerated. It is going to affect a lot of jobs here,” Bankowski said. “It is quite urgent because we have big pressure to preserve green wood. So we shouldn’t take the green wood until it is absolutely ready. It’s different when you have a large timber supply. You don’t have to think so much about it. But with the Mountain Pine Beetle situation you have to think hard about how to make things sustainable.” Economics isn’t the only consideration. Partialcutting methods put less overall stress on ecosystems. The usual factors of sunlight, wind effects, soil animation and hydrology stay more stable; wildlife still gets a familiar habitat for food sourcing, breeding, rearing young, coexisting with predators and so forth. With a new government, including a new Minister of Forests, and a relatively new Chief Forester in Dianne Nicholls (in the position since late 2014), and a new beetle infestation, Barnkowski is convinced now is the time to ease partial-cutting in where clearcutting used to be.

Jacek Bankowski. Submitted photo.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

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Local bridge getting multi-million-dollar

Upgrades

Written by Frank Peebles

Construction is scheduled to begin in early 2018 to replace the Parsnip River Bridge, improving safety and capacity on Highway 97 North. “Highway 97 North is used extensively as a corridor to transport people, supplies, services and finished products to job sites and to market,” said Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Claire Trevena. “The new Parsnip River Bridge will be able to accommodate larger commercial vehicles and will provide a safer, more comfortable crossing for residents of the surrounding communities.” The Parsnip River Bridge is a critical link for communities and resource sector development in northeastern British Columbia. The current steel truss bridge, constructed in 1953, will be replaced with a wider, open-top structure that can handle larger loads along the corridor for major commercial industries. The new bridge will eliminate the current height restrictions and will have a greater capacity to accommodate heavy loads required to service resource industries like mining, forestry, oil and gas. This will, according to government officials, significantly improve access between the Peace River region and the rest of British

Columbia. The MLA for the bridge’s location, Prince GeorgeMackenzie’s Mike Morris, said “expanding the transportation infrastructure throughout our region is essential to meet the demands of the economic growth we are experiencing. It’s encouraging whenever we can get to work on projects like this as it will only mean more growth and opportunity for our communities.” The bridge is located just west of the Mackenzie Junction point where Highway 39 meets Highway 97, approximately 140 kms north of Prince George. In addition to the bridge replacement, approximately two kilometres of highway adjacent to the bridge will be realigned to improve safety and provide better sight lines for drivers. Eiffage Innovated Canada Inc., from Burlington, Ont., was awarded the $18.5-million contract. This project is jointly funded by the Government of Canada and the Province of B.C. Construction will start in early 2018, with the new bridge expected to be fully operational in the fall of 2019. Deconstruction of the old bridge will be completed by spring 2020.

Image courtesy of news.gov.bc.ca

www.pgcitizen.ca | Thursday, January 25, 2018 Dr. Thomas Tannert Photo courtesy of unbc.ca.

Local prof’s career climbing with tall wood

Structures Written by Frank Peebles A local professor has been named a Canada Research Chair and it is in a field of study quintessentially connected to Prince George. UNBC prof Dr. Thomas Tannert teaches in the Master of Engineering in Integrated Wood Design Program located inside the Wood Innovation & Design Centre (WIDC) in downtown Prince George. He is the freshly minted Canada Research Chair in Hybrid Wood Structures Engineering. “This new chair will strengthen research excellence in our Wood Engineering program and enable UNBC to attract more outstanding students and post-doctoral research fellows,” said UNBC president Dr. Daniel Weeks. “The Canada Research Chairs Program recognizes the exceptional work Dr. Tannert is undertaking to create local solutions with global impact.” The Canada Research Chairs Program is a federal initiative to attract and retain exceptional scholars in fields including engineering and the natural sciences, health sciences, humanities and social sciences. Dr. Tannert is seeking to identify challenges and provide solutions to the structural design of tall wood buildings. He will explore many facets of engineering, including seismic performance, the ease of constructability and wood connections. “This area of research is at the centre of an international movement to put more of an emphasis on wood construction,” Dr. Tannert said. “Discovering innovative ways to use wood is an ideal solution to the challenge of reducing the carbon footprint of buildings.” He was no sooner appointed to this prestigious post when he was also named the recipient of a major B.C. trades and technology award. Dr. Tannert and his research colleague Matheo

Duerfeld, CEO of BC Passive House, shared the BC Innovation Council’s Ignite Award in the Structural Engineering category (the BCIC hands out annual awards in four categories). The four project winners split a purse of $735,000. There is a string attached to the funding, however. The applicants must use the money to leverage further investment funds in their project at a ratio of two dollars for every one contributed by BCIC. In this way, Tannert’s and Duefeld’s initiative for commercial spaces built of wood (using improved wood-based prefabricated timber panels) will actually be worth three times the initial award money. “BCIC Ignite brings researchers together with industry to help grow our innovation economy and create jobs for British Columbians,” said Bruce Ralston, Minister of Jobs Trade and Technology. “Congratulations to all four award winners. Your collaboration will help propel B.C. innovation in the areas of environmental protection, advanced commercial construction, wastewater treatment and neurodegenerative disorders.” “There is a significant level of research, collaboration, and ingenuity happening across our province,” added BCIC president and CEO Carl Anderson. “BCIC Ignite is able to take all of these moving parts and focus them on creating innovative solutions for real, market driven challenges. BCIC Ignite is continually driving B.C.-based companies to use B.C. research to change the world through innovation.” Dr. Tannert will conduct his research in the Wood Innovation Research Laboratory currently under construction in downtown Prince George next door to the main WIDC building. Dr. Tannert also holds the BC Leadership Chair in Tall Wood and Hybrid Structures Engineering. He is one of six current UNBC faculty members who hold a Canada Research Chair position.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

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www.pgcitizen.ca | Thursday, January 25, 2018

NASA Tech sniffs out B.C. greenhouse gasses

Written by Frank Peebles NASA technology has helped B.C. scientists adapt a tool to detect the presence of greenhouse gas. Think of it as a flying bloodhound with a nose for leaks. Northern B.C. was its primary training ground and according to the developers, it is ready to

roam the landscape looking for gas leaks and other emission points more quickly, easily and cheaply than ever before. The public agency leading the development of the tool is Geoscience BC, a neutral and nonpartisan body devoted to open-source knowledge of the British Columbia geological profile. Not con-

tent to use the tool on a callout basis, Geoscience BC is now underway with an initiative called the GHG Map Project to do a comprehensive baseline analysis of the greenhouse gases already present so proper computer projections can be more accurately calculated and fluctuations can be noticed readily. “Independent scientific data is essential in making informed decisions relating to natural resource development,” said Carlos Salas, Geoscience BC’s vice-president of energy. “We are demonstrating how the technology works and how it will be used to map greenhouse gas emissions in northeast British Columbia and beyond to help the resource sector, First Nations, governments and communities to make more informed resource management decisions. By bringing this technology to commercialization, GHGMap will also create new economic opportunities for western Canada.” The scientist who has led the building of this tool is Dr. Michael Whiticar. In an exclusive conversation with Citizen-Industry & Trades, Whiticar said the tool is about 10 years in the making, and a particular breakthrough at NASA is what triggered his hopes and dreams for a drone that could fly the B.C. topography. He was already doing some unrelated work with NASA when he spotted the ability for a local application to their cosmic goals. “I’d been working with NASA because I’d spent half of my life looking at methane,” Whiticar said. “There’s this long standing debate over if

there’s methane on Mars. That was the connection to NASA. They are obviously very interested in what the chemistry is of Mars. They’ve been building instrumentation to go on these missions, on the Rovers. One of the head instrument builders for NASA is now a colleague of mine. We were chatting and we thought, well, couldn’t we use this on Earth?” Meanwhile, the other technological development that was also reaching a commercial warm-spot was drone machinery. Little remote control helicopters were now available at the corner store, just in time for the GHG sensory gear Whiticar was testing. The two were a perfect fit. “It weighs 85 grams, the actual sensor, and the whole package weighs 400 grams,” he explained. “It’s actually lighter than a bottle of beer. Because of the small package and the high measurement capability, it just became natural to put it on a drone. It’s not a new idea, we’d been dreaming about this for years, only now we had the technology to realize the dream.” The estimate for British Columbia’s GHG cloud is about 65 megatonnes each year. It is a figure derived from computer modelling and extrapolation math starting at some basic data. For a simplistic example, a car’s tailpipe emissions are measured, then data is checked to indicate there are, say, 100 cars in British Columbia, so the one measurement is multiplied by 100 and there you have the estimated GHG output for the province. But that kind of projection misses a lot of specif-

Photos courtesy of AJC Media Group Inc.

ics, so it would be handy to have some way of getting literal data in real time. This tool gets the province much closer to those hard, fast readings instead of calculations. In addition to the effects that will have on policies and industrial development decisions, it will also be a handy tool for applications like pipeline operators pinpointing leaks quickly and accurately, if former landfills are giving off decomposition gases, if there are any ground sources naturally emitting gases. That is one of the reasons the drones are being tested first in the north. The Peace region has a lot of natural gas and a lot of pipelines compared to the rest of the province. “We know most of the players up in, say, Fort St. John, and that area,” said Whiticar. “They really don’t want to have GHG emissions. Nobody wants that. It’s not a good news story, it’s not good for their bottom line, it’s not good for the environment. And they would like to know where their emissions are. Right now they actually go out and make a lot of measurements by hand, so some person has to go out in a pickup truck and take a handheld monitor and walk this way and that over who-knows-what kind of territory and try to determine where there are leaks. Right now we can do it in a fraction of the time and with much greater precision by flying the drone over. The industry is all over this; the industry is really quite happy about this.” The benefit of this technology becoming so agile and affordable is the continuing advancements that will come next. Soon it will be readily acces-

sible for a First Nation or a municipality or even a household to get GHG readings done. Whiticar envisions, for example, that a fire department could scan the scene of a burning building from high above and pinpoint where dangerous gas sources might be. It is already possible for satellites to provide hints and broad indications from their vantage point above the earth, and that can direct the drones to zero in all the more quickly, he said. “Natural and human releases of greenhouse gases such as methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide to the atmosphere present real concerns for climate change and air quality. Assessing and reducing these emissions requires reliable, uncomplicated measurements,” Whiticar said. Several partners have joined in on the initial stages of this made-in-B.C. technology. The federal government is a key contributor to the project. “Our government believes in using evidencebased decision making to create policies that benefit all Canadians” said the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development and Minister responsible for Western Economic Diversification Canada. “This includes our approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We are proud to support made-in-Canada solutions that bolster industry, create highly skilled jobs and protect our environment. Congratulations to Geoscience BC for its efforts to make Canada a global leader in innovation and the fight against climate change.”

Thursday, January 25, 2018

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www.pgcitizen.ca | Thursday, January 25, 2018

P.G. farms and kitchens

Heating Up Together Written by Frank Peebles

Roman Muntener with the Farmers Market cook book ‘Cooking with The Market” in Books and Company. Citizen photo by Brent Braaten.

Big industry is almost always built on or spawned from many small operations. Agriculture is especially so. For example, while local forestry is no longer hundreds of small mills, but now a small collection of mega companies, and while mining is dominated by large companies stepping in to take over successful exploration projects, agriculture in northern B.C. is still the domain of family farms and small business enterprises. The Prince George Farmers’ Market is ground zero for small agri-food and acri-craft operations. The public can now thumb through the pages of a cookbook that binds together the possibilities and the realities of what this region can produce and how that can matter in everyone’s home. We all need food, we all have mouths to feed, and we all have more access to healthy local food than perhaps we realized. Cooking With The Market is a coil-bound, full-

colour celebration of the city’s year-round farmers’ market, and a snapshot – check that, more than 140 snapshots – of the earthy industry our region is capable of providing people who are included to grow a living from the ground. “It’s all local. We have so much here,” said PGFM co-founder Roman Muntener, a retired designer and advertising consultant who is now, with his wife Monika, the proprietors of Red Rooster Artisan Bakery. Muntener put his background to work to spearhead the creation of the cookbook. All the recipes were provided by PGFM members and were heavily slanted to local ingredients. Almost everything needed to make these dishes can be sourced from this region, and the bulk of that can be found at the year-round market found at 1074 6th Avenue. “Our vendors use these recipes themselves, so they know how good they are, they know very well how to prepare these dishes because they

do it at home,” Muntener said. “A group of us got together on Sundays and we would prepare 1012 of the recipes to make sure we could prepare them from the recipes’ instructions, photograph them, and test out the finished results. It wasn’t always full portions, but it would take us from mid-morning to late afternoon, most of the time, and we sure didn’t have to eat breakfast or dinner those days.” The people helping the Munteners with the weekly cook-ups included Judith Wocknitz, Lois Westlake, Szilvia Bidner, Karin Dayton, Nancie Krushelnicki and Rebecca Austin. The PGFM also called in some expert outside help. Northern Lights Estate Winery provided some on-the-record advice about pairing the recipes with their all-local wines. Their in-house chief of agriculture Noemie Touchette was also there for their advice. Two of the city’s top chefs - Wayne Kitchen of CrossRoads and Brian Quarmby of Betulla Burning – also provided firsthand consultancy on the food preparation of using this base of local ingredients. Kitchen and Quarmby each wrote an introduction to the book discussing their own personal philosophies of sourcing local food and their own affinity for the PGFM as a place to discover quality, nutritious and plentiful ingredients. “Food security is something we need to have higher on our minds,” said Muntener. “We have all these highways and railways and runways that come together in Prince George, but if something were to happen to shut down our transportation systems, all it would take is a major flood or a blizzard or an earthquake or some kind of emergency like that, and the grocery stores can only sustain the city for about three days. As a community, we should be planning for doing better than that. It’s a matter of building our own homegrown food network, our own agriculture. And that’s only going to improve our local economy and our local health.” The PGFM network knows that one cookbook

isn’t going to turn the key that unlocks local food security, but it can be a step in the healthy direction. It is an awareness agent, a fundraiser (it is for sale at the PGFM, Northern Lights Estate Winery, Canadian Tire and Books & Company), and it’s a burst of fun for people who like to cook. This brings local kitchens as close as can be to local farms and greenhouses, even nudging people to grow some of those ingredients themselves. There are 180 recipes in total, all arranged into seasonal sections, slathered with photos and graphs, sprinkled with boxes of extra information, and even some humour like the fake splatters making some of the pages look already well-used or the recipe for cooking loon. “There’s a story to that one, right out of history,” said Muntener. “The early explorers, as they made their way across Canada, would always get to know the First Nations natives they met and talk with them about the food they should learn to prepare in each new region. One explorer even made a point of talking about how plentiful loons were but the First Nations everywhere only directed them to eat duck or geese, never these loons. Why? So this explorer decided to see for himself, he cooked one up, and just as they’d been told, it tasted just awful. Loons are not a good game bird at all. So we put in a special recipe for loon, just as a joke.” The punch line leaves no doubt about the humourous intention. The book got financial support from executive sponsors Northern Development Initiative Trust, Datoff Brothers Construction and Concept Design. The Prince George Citizen also helped with production. The book got the attention of radio host Sheryl MacKay who featured it on her provincial CBC show North By Northwest. Cooking With The Market is also selling well at all its point-of-sale locations, and Muntener said the early statistics seem to indicate there is a positive effect at the Prince George Farmers’ Market itself with people coming in to search out the ingredients corresponding to the recipes.

All the recipes were provided by PGFM members and were heavily slanted to local ingredients.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

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www.pgcitizen.ca | Thursday, January 25, 2018

Written by Frank Peebles

Timber-Frame Building helps local First Nation and environment

Photos courtesy of Zirnhelt Timber Frames Ltd.

Environmental stewardship is not just a hallmark of aboriginal philosophies, it has been the indigenous way of life for millennia. It still is in modern times. The Alkali Lake people (the Esk’etemc First Nation or EFN) located 50 kms west of Williams Lake and about 240 kms directly south of Prince George is demonstrating how modern construction can keep pace with the concept of ecosystem sensitivity and sustainability. The EFN recently announced that a building in their village had set a new regional standard in that field of work. “Alkali Lake is home to the first building in a northern climate and the first in a First Nation

community to qualify under the Canadian Home Builders’ Association (CHBA) Net Zero Home Labelling Program,” said Terri McConnachie, executive officer for the Prince George branch of the CHBA. Sam Zirnhelt, owner of Zirnhelt Timber Frames Ltd. (a former Prince George resident) and a member of CHBA Northern British Columbia, worked with the Esk’etemc First Nation to build a new Alkali Lake Recovery Centre in 2017. The project goals included how the Net-Zero Energy Ready approach could cost effectively improve occupant comfort, improve indoor air quality, ensure a durable building that would last for generations, and decrease the building’s overall energy consumption and electricity costs

to operate the 6,800-square-foot centre. “The client goals of energy efficiency, durability, aesthetics and value were our focus from the preliminary design phase,” said Zirnhelt. “We also pre-crafted the timber frame and panelized walls in our shop, which helped to lower costs and decrease the on-site construction time to only four months.” McConnachie explained that the recovery centre was built using a high-performance exterior insulated panelized wall system to lower energy use. Also included were advanced heat pumps for space and water heating, high performing ventilation machinery for fresh air heat recovery, and designated space in its design to install future solar panels. The centre also tested at 0.5 air changes per hour and tested at 68.4 per cent better than a building built to code, which demonstrates its high level of energy efficiency and superior performance. The new building will not only benefit the Esk’etemc First Nation, but also future buildings that strive to meet similar levels of energy performance, McConnachie said. Zirnhelt agreed that such a building had value beyond it’s immediate functions. “The learning experience of creating this NetZero Energy Ready building was enhanced by the collaboration of the Esk’etemc First Nation, our team of subtrades, and many government agencies through Natural Resources Canada’s Local Energy Efficiency Partnerships initiative. We’re thankful for the efforts of everyone involved,” he said. Natural Resources Canada and BC Hydro will be monitoring the performance of the building’s systems. The goal is to understand how these solutions can benefit other communities across British Columbia and Canada in reducing energy consumption. “British Columbia is home to all of Canada’s climate zones,” said Neil Moody, CEO of the Canadian Home Builders’ Association of B.C. “The knowledge from this local project will have panCanadian benefits in the development of more voluntary Net Zero Energy homes and buildings.” The northern B.C. chapter of the CHBA drew special attention to the location of this project. “We are proud of Sam Zirnhelt, for taking the lead through a partnership with the Esk’etemc First Nation. He is a trailblazer in our region,” said Joe Hart, president of this region’s chapter. The message got through all the way to the national level. Canadian CHBA CEO Kevin Lee

said“the CHBA congratulates the team at Zirnhelt Timber Frames Ltd. for being the first in a northern climate and the first in a First Nation community to achieve this prestigious recognition under our program. We would also like to thank CHBA BC and Energy Advisor Rod Croome, for the third-party testing and inspections that supported Zirnhelt Timber Frames Ltd. Together, the builder and their team of professionals have achieved an impressive milestone in Canadian housing.” The Net Zero Home Labelling Program is owned and operated by the CHBA. The organization calls it “a voluntary standard that provides the industry and consumers with a clearly defined and rigorous two-tiered technical requirement that recognizes Net Zero and Net Zero Ready Homes, and identifies the builders and renovators who provide them.” A Net Zero Ready home’s energy performance is up to 80 per cent better than a home built to the building code.

Technical Details • Building Envelope - The thermal resistance of the walls was upgraded from an effective RSI of 3.72 (R-21) to RSI 5.86 (R-33). This was accomplished through the addition of 2” of graphite infused expanded polystyrene (EPS) insulation. The air tightness test exceeded 0.5 air changes per hour (ACH). • Heating System - The previous heating system was electric resistance heating. The upgraded system is a central Cold Climate Air Source Heat Pump (CCASHP). The heat pump will also include a centralized air distribution system which will include heat recovery ventilation (HRV). • Domestic Hot Water - A Heat Pump Water Heater was used to achieve the required level of performance. • PV Solar Ready Design - To meet program guidelines, a system design for future solar panels and all necessary installation components were included.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

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BDC Sees Opportunity In

Baby-Boomer Business Written by Frank Peebles Entrepreneurs have the desire to retire just like their wage-working counterparts. The babyboomer bubble has floated up the age scale in all walks of life, so an abundance of veteran business owners are nearing the departure point from their employment. The significant difference is, they largely have no retirement plan other than the business itself. The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) conducted a coast-to-coast research project examining small business ownership and the retirement arrangements being made. In Canada, 41 per cent of entrepreneurs said they were readying to sell. In B.C., that was slightly higher at 43 per cent. It’s a staggering amount of change about to take place in the Canadian economy, said Pierre Cleroux, the BDC’s chief economist. “For the entrepreneurs, we are just at the beginning of the wave,” he said. “Our research is showing it is going to happen in the next five years. A large number of them are going to sell their business to retire, so that’s going to be a lot of transition in the next five years.”

This is the same demographic shakeup that already happened in big business and in the public sector. Those streams of the economy have Human Resources departments, pension plans, benefits packages, so the retirements and buy-outs occurred slowly over the past five to 10 years. Entrepreneurs are often fully invested in their own businesses, so they had to hold the course of their income longer in order to build up a retirement exit plan. Also, entrepreneurs are very often the owners of their businesses because they are passionate about some part of it, so they hold on longer to enjoy that sense of meaning and fulfillment. But age sidesteps no one. Some entrepreneurs are going to play their cards into big windfalls and retire to the easy life. Others will get stuck with little or no return on their long, hard investment of time and money. “Our research is showing that some entrepreneurs aren’t prepared for this transition,” Cleroux said. “Some stopped investing too soon so it’s damaging their business. “Some do not have sound financial reporting,

and when you’re a potential buyer the first thing you look for is the financial statements, so if you don’t have sound financial reporting that’s going to hurt your chances of selling. So it’s important that business owners who want to exit to be well prepared. If, they don’t, they are going to lead some money on the table, won’t be able to maximize the value of their business. “You have to keep investing. If you stop investing five years before you sell, if you have old equipment, old technology, this is not going to be good when you sell. So you have to keep investing. You will sell at a higher price. “And also, you should maximize the profits,” Cleroux said. “For example, some people give themselves higher salaries for a lower profit, which is good if you manage your own business but when you sell it, potential buyers will be looking at how the business is able to generate profit. It’s important to plan all this. Have a fiscal strategy.” The BDC is calling on businesses to call them for consultation on how to transition to the sale of the business you own. Traditional lending and investment agencies can also help. Cleroux said their research is providing for some general direction, but each entrepreneur should be establishing their own plan. “The best way to succeed with transition, first, is with your family,” he said. “Second is to sell to somebody who’s already in the business. Where it’s less of a guarantee is selling to a stranger. If you offer to be involved together for a while, that’s a good recipe for success.“ This baby-boomer business bubble is neither a good thing nor bad thing for the overall economy, said Cleroux. It is just the current condition of the market. Some will suffer, some with shine. If a preexisting business falters as a result of the transition, that will open doors for the competitors of that area. If a preexisting business thrives in new hands, it will open the doors for the consumers of that area. The word that fits best over this inevitable condition, said Cleroux, is “opportunity.” For those who are interested in being an entrepreneur, especially those who have already gone to school for it, or have apprenticed in the business world can expect to parlay their fresh market energy into actual business ownership at higher levels than a startup can provide. A bunch of veteran business operations are about to go on the market, possibly for discount prices, but certainly with a track record and a customer base. “It’s also a great opportunity to scale up your business,” Cleroux said. “Our businesses in Canada are small by international standards so if they have a business and they want to expand, if they want to build on their business, there will

be lots of complementary businesses up for sale.” Those in a position to buy someone else’s business can capitalize on getting a bigger client list, obtaining a new dimension like a muffler shop adding an oil change division or transmission operation, it’s a chance to benevolently subtract a competitor, or even prevent a new player getting into your market. “A common example is a car dealership will buy another one because they know the business, they understand the business. By buying another one they can save on the back office and make a better business out of it,” Cleroux said. The stakes are significant. Customers will experience a flux in the levels of service and the availability of goods. Some will be improvements and some will be setbacks. If your business relies on the goods and services of other businesses – a parts supplier, a private trucking firm, a cleaning operation, a technology provider, even something as commonplace as a tire shop or a vehicle mechanic – you almost inevitably will encounter some kind of change in the people with whom you do business, if in fact that business continues. Building relationships with those supplementary businesses can help your own, and not that far in the future. It also matters to a whole community of employees. According to BC Stats and Statistics Canada, in 2015 in this province there were just over 1-million people employed across 388,500 small and medium businesses. That’s almost a quarter of the entire British Columbia population. About 200,000 of those small/medium businesses were operated by the owners with no paid help. B.C. has the highest levels in Canada for the amount of provincial income earned from small business, at 32 per cent (the national average is 27 per cent). Furthermore, 38 per cent of owner/operator small businesses in B.C. are proprieted by women, which is also the highest rate in the country. The owners of those businesses have the advantage of being able to set up their plans and at least get an understanding in advance of what their business value might be and what their best exit strategies might be. Those looking to get into business can also prepare themselves for the selloff about to occur. “There are going to be opportunities in every part of Canada and in every sector,” Cleroux said. “You want to consider what kind of business you want and what you can afford. Prepare a good business case. This person (prospective buyer of a business) will very likely need some financing so in order to get financing you need a good business plan. That would be my advice.”

Thursday, January 25, 2018