Building Good

Our host Tim Coldwell is not OK with the industry standard. There aren’t enough Indigenous partnerships and communities often aren’t involved in decisions around projects that affect them. That’s not just morally wrong, it’s a missed opportunity. Our guest Jodee Dick is CEO at Khowutzun Development Corporation and for her Indigenous partnership isn’t optional, it’s mandatory - and, it’s overdue. S...

Why does it matter if a construction project buys from diverse suppliers? If I’m a gay electrician, why should I be open about that? If an architect or carpenter is hiding their sexual orientation or gender identity, how will that affect the project? Geoff Capelle is our guest host and he’s chatting with the CEO of Canada's LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce, Darrell Schuurman. They talk about creating saf...

Only 17% of construction jobs are going to women, and even those are mostly in off-site roles. Jeanette Southwood wants that to be at least 30%. She’s vice president of corporate affairs and strategic partnership at Engineers Canada, but right from the start of her career as an engineer she noticed the barriers and hostility that women can face in this industry. When the stereotype is catcalls and...

Did you know a water fountain is a form of accessible design? It’s not just ramps, automatic doors, and escalators. Thinking about accessibility from the ground up makes the spaces we create easier and more beautiful for everyone who uses them. Sean Crump, CEO of Universal Access, spends his time fighting to make the AEC sector more accessible, both in its workplaces and in the buildings we create...

“Diversity” is not a buzzword. It’s not just the right thing to do. Diversity is the solution to a labour shortage, it’s the key to new insights and perspectives, and it’s a way to make our spaces easier and more welcoming to everyone. In the new season of Building Good we’re exploring how the architecture, engineering and construction sector might look if it can address its diversity issues and b...

Buying carbon offsets when you take a flight or build a building can sound a little bit like cheating. Should it really be as simple as paying your way to net-zero? Do these offsets actually do anything, or are they more like sustainability cryptocurrency… just tokens that only have value because we say they do. David Oliver is CEO and founder of Greenlines technology, a company that allows people...

If you want to build a net zero project you need to predict its energy use. That’s where Matt Grace comes in. He’s an expert in creating virtual models of houses, extensions, or even entire communities to model the ways energy is used. This isn’t just a static input/output model. It changes with seasons, and as the climate changes they have to take into account rising temperatures and more erratic...

If it were a country, cement would be responsible for more carbon emissions than the entire European Union. More than four times as much as Canada. Reducing the amount of carbon that concrete production creates has to be part of achieving a net zero future, so we’ve brought in Rob Cumming from Lafarge to help us figure out how. He’s head of sustainability there, so he’s full of solutions to decarb...

A huge chunk of a building’s emissions are baked into the fabric of the building itself. Even if its operations are net zero, the building itself might not be. This is called embodied carbon, and to truly get to net zero the industry needs to address this blind spot. That’s one of the things Luka Matutinovic works on with his company Purpose Building. They’ve created the plan that will transition...

Achieving net zero by 2050 requires us to build differently, but what about the buildings that are already up? We can’t just knock them all down, even if they are inefficient carbon factories. We retrofit them. This can be expensive and difficult though, but it's possible. Chris Benedetti knows how to make it possible, and where the financial tools exist to make it happen. We talk to Chris in this...

Canada has set an ambitious environmental goal: to have net-zero emissions as a country by 2050. One of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gasses are our buildings, so how does the architecture and construction industry help achieve that goal? In this series Building Good speaks to industry leaders to find out how we can achieve Zero by Fifty. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Joi...

When car companies build a new car they don’t reinvent the wheel, and they don’t have engineers assembling each car individually. Pretty much everything in our lives is built out of other smaller components that are prefabricated with some degree of automation. Except for buildings. Jaimie Johnston at Bryden Wood has been working on changing that for over 25 years and he’s had a lot of pushback, b...

Construction is rife with sexism. It’s not just catcalls on building sites, it’s tradeswomen being passed over for contracts. It’s being told you’ll never be as good as a man. It’s bad jokes… and sometimes it’s abuse. This isn’t just a question of crass language and a tough atmosphere, it’s contributing to the industry’s very real labour shortage. When construction and trades are this difficult fo...

Construction often rubs communities up the wrong way. Architects roll in with a construction firm and big money decides what’s getting built and where. It’s no fun for the people who live there… but this isn’t how indigenous architects work. Brian Porter runs Two Row Architect, and he tells us that they work totally differently to mainstream architects. The way they build is inclusive, involving t...

A lot of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, depend on the weather, making their power output fluctuate. We need to store energy at times of high output. That’s where Annette Verschuren’s company NRStore comes in. They’re providing energy storage solutions (aka batteries) across Canada, and even installing microgrids in remote, fly-in locations. Annette is a true leader in sustainabl...

Architecture is an intersection of art and science, but the art isn’t just in a beautiful facade. The real artwork in architecture is in the space between. It’s the experience, the livability and now, importantly, the sustainability of a space. Thinking in this way requires a creative mind, and the best of those minds are more than just architects - they are polymaths. Anthony Fieldman is a partne...

The climate crisis is no longer a future problem. As forests burn across North America we turn up the AC, which increases the fossil fuels we burn, which makes climate change happen faster. We need clean energy solutions, and we need people who know how to use them. Jordyn Burnouf is a member of Black Lake First Nation and grew up in a Métis community. She’s also an expert in clean energy from an...

The construction industry is overwhelmingly male, and notorious for sexist attitudes towards women. There’s also a huge labour shortage, and plenty of women out of work. So how do we get women into those rewarding and lucrative trade careers? Carol Moen is the CEO of Women Building Futures and she’s helping women achieve economic empowerment so they can build good futures for themselves… and maybe...

To build good you need to use materials that have been built good. But how do we know that the materials we’re sourcing have been produced ethically, with sustainably sourced materials in an ethical work environment? The global economy is full of people looking to make a quick buck by producing things quickly, cheaply, and dirtily. Some big companies have even found child labour in their supply ch...

Immigration is key to building Canada’s future, but we haven’t been hitting the nail on the head so far... so how do we do it right? And how do we make sure that it works for everyone in Canada? Senator Ratna Omidvar is part of The Century Initiative, which means she wants to see 100 million Canadians by 2100. She chats to Tim about what our country looks like with that many people, and helps us p...

Looking after our minds is not something that’s just nice to have, it’s a crucial part of our occupational health. People work better when they have that support. So where do we start? Psychiatrist Dr David Goldbloom walks us through how we build good environments and good jobs that look after everyone’s mental health… and it starts at home. Specifically, it starts with everyone having a home. Lov...

How do we build better systems, better lives and a better place to live? How do we build… good? Tim Coldwell and Jen Hancock are back to ask those big questions. We’re aiming to make the construction industry (and the world) a better place to live and work. Back with weekly episodes starting July 7, 2021. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Join the Building Good Podcast Community t...

With a vision to plant over 1 billion trees by 2030, the co-founders (and cousins) of tentree , Derrick Emsley and Stephen Emsley , believe that big change starts small. They join host Jen Hancock to discuss the unique business they've built around sustainable fashion with one goal in mind—plant ten trees for every item sold and protect and preserve the world. From humble beginnings in Saskatchewa...

How we design our cities has a huge impact on the health and wellness of people. In a recent series of articles, A healthy city, beyond cycling , Marianne Lefever and her co-author explore the complex interconnections of health and infrastructure. For example, cycling is a great way to create healthy opportunities for people in cities but depending on where you cycle, you could be exposing yoursel...

We're better together, right? There’s no “I” in team. There are dozens of ways to say it, but no matter which we choose, working together is sometimes easier said than done. Today, Tim Coldwell is joined by Pat Boucher, the Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer for the Canada Border Services Agency , as they explore the role of government in society. They go into detail on how a collabor...