The Competitive Edge – Growing Your Business in the Future of Construction is a year-long, six-part series of webinars bringing together trends, opportunities, challenges, and information for the industry.
Canadians know construction. The $170 billion industry employs some 1.4 million people in every community and city across the country. And yet, there remains room for improvement in this mainstay industry – arguably one of our oldest and one of our most traditional.
The Vancouver Economic Commission (VEC), Vancouver Regional Construction Association (VRCA), and the Zero Emissions Building Exchange (ZEBx) are proud to partner on the year-long event series The Competitive Edge – Growing Your Business in the Future of Construction.
Attendees of the series will both gain valuable information and have unique opportunities to discuss key issues that could impact the industry:
- Information, research, and of key policy and regulatory directions, especially those related to climate change, relevant to the long-term outlook of Vancouver’s construction industry
- Showcase core opportunities for business growth, cost-reduction, or new revenue streams as it pertains to those issue areas
- Raise awareness and profile the value of industry resources and programming from ZEBx, BC Housing, and others for the ICI industry among VRCA members
This is a ticketed event series and all meetings are conducted virtually on Microsoft Teams. Members of the Vancouver Regional Construction Association will need to be logged in to take advantage of discounted rates.
Sessions and Speakers
Session One: Maintaining Competitiveness in complex times
Date: April 29, 2021 | 8:30AM-10:00AM
The opening session set the context for the rest of the series, including a high-level overview of major changes coming to the construction sector in Vancouver and BC in the next decade.
- Major regulatory changes coming this decade
- Advances in industry trends and best practices
- New resources, partnerships, and initiatives working to build construction sector capacity
Session Two: The ICI Sector, Step Code, and Vancouver’s Zero Emissions Building Plan
Date: May 27, 2021 | 8:30AM-10:00AM
This session focused on one of the single largest changes in BC’s building regulatory environment: the move to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gases (GHGs) in new construction. The two most important pieces of policy in BC will be explained and explored with regulatory experts and people working on the leading edge of practice.
- Overview of the BC Energy Step Code as it pertains to the ICI sector
- Fundamentals of the Vancouver Zero Emission Building Plan
- Resources for builders
Session Three: Advanced Structures and Envelopes – from Mass Timber to Prefab
Date: June 24, 2021 | 8:30AM-10:00AM
This session focused on discussing and exploring the huge amount of changes that are moving forward in advanced structural design, including mass timber, prefabrication and industrial methods of assembly.
- Policy and regulatory drivers for mass timber
- Addressing the cost differential
- Best practices in design and assembly
Session Four: Alterations and Existing Buildings
Date: September 2021
In the fourth session, this workshop dug into a massive area of work in the province: retrofitting and alterations of existing buildings.
- Overview of Vancouver’s forthcoming retrofit regulations
- Experience and insight from builders and owners in other jurisdictions which already have alterations codes
- Introduce elements or ideas within BC’s future alterations code
Session Five: Green Demolition and Deconstruction
Date: October 2021
The fifth session introduced concepts that have become highly active in the low-rise market, and that may soon enter the ICI market: green demolition and deconstruction.
- Vancouver and other cities’ work and regulations on green demolition and deconstruction
- Value-creation opportunities for reducing or re-directing waste
- How future regulations (e.g. “embodied carbon”) may relate to ICI assembly and waste management practices
Session Six: CLosing Session – Global Leadership
The final session will provide time and space for reflection and discussion on everything that has been brought forward over the past year. It will conclude with an open dialogue about the best ways to continue this work.
