🏆 The award goes to…

Together with

Good morning!  🎂 Happy 100th birthday to the one and only cross-laminated timber (CLT). The material was invented in the 1920s by two Washington State residents. What would they think if they knew that CLT is presently a $1.66 billion industry in the U.S. and its usage is expected to triple by 2030?

In this newsletter:

🏗️ Celebrating innovation

🌲 Massive mass timber 

🚧 A Great Wall of China mishap

MARKETS

*Stock data as of last market close; currency, oil and crypto data as of 8:00PM ET September 11th, 2023.

Economy:  The Canadian dollar is on the rise after a five-month low. Experts say this is due to an increase in risk appetite weighing on the safe-haven U.S. dollar. The recovery also comes as the Bank of Canada chose to hold interest rates after the economy has shown signs of cooling down after high inflation.

THE BIG STORY

Construction innovation is alive and well

The results of the 25 Innovators in Construction awards are in. The winners cast a wide net over many different fields. They include some of the largest general contractors in the country, tech startups, materials manufacturers, homebuilders, environmental champions and more.

Selecting winners: The winners were chosen by a panel of five judges who assessed applicants based on five criteria: technological innovation, trailblazing, workforce development, sustainability and environmental impact, collaboration and partnerships.

What the judges said:

• “Making choices when faced with so many great applications is hard - it is exciting to see so many different organizations pushing the boundaries of our industry. We need to cheer them all because pioneering is hard!” - Bill Black, Calgary Construction Association president

• “I was very happy to see so many quality submissions, which made it challenging to get to a short list of 25. The variety in the businesses, the services, products, and technologies were much broader than I expected.” - Dom Costantini, BLDR president

• “I was blown away by the innovation that’s occurring across our industry. There were some interesting themes when reviewing the submissions from well known general contractors implementing new technologies to new products being created that reduce carbon footprint. My biggest take away was that now is probably the most exciting time to be in engineering and construction as we see innovation disrupt so many aspects of what was previously accepted practices or products.” - Joe Di Placito, RAM Consulting co-founder and CEO

Industry reaction: Winning companies like PCL, DOZR, Graham Construction sent out press releases expressing their reaction and thoughts on industry innovation in the days after the announcement.

What happens next: This is just the beginning. The culmination of the awards will be an in-person event in Vancouver where the winners will celebrate together and share some of their keys to success. There will also be a report published with more in-depth comment from the winners with their thoughts in the state of the construction sector.

NEED TO KNOW

The week's headlines

🏛️ Internationally renowned architect Raymond Moriyama passed away at 93 this month. Born in Vancouver, He was famous for his work on the Canadian War Museum, the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, Ottawa City Hall and more.

🏠 Housing Minister Sean Fraser is looking at new tools to speed up housing construction. He announced that the government is considering removing the GST on affordable housing projects and dedicating federal lands to rental housing.

👷‍♀️ Construction jobs appear to be recovering after months of struggle. New labour data from Statistics Canada show the Canadian economy added 34,000 new construction jobs in August, marking a month-over-month gain of 2.2%. The data comes after 45,000 construction jobs were lost in July. This was more losses than any other sector.

💰 Nearly one in five Calgary households do not have affordable housing. The city’s latest Housing Needs Assessment Report, published every five years, shows roughly 84,600 households spend more than 30% on housing costs. It also found that costs to buy a home have increased nearly 40% in some cases.

PROJECT SPOTLIGHT

Raising the mass timber roof

The Shane Homes YMCA in Calgary is not only one of the largest YMCAs in the world. It has one of North America’s largest mass timber roofs. The open-concept facility has 284,000 square feet of space that includes a fitness center, triple gymnasium, aquatic center, the BMO Theatre, and a Calgary Public Library. The project team included PCL, GEC Architecture and Structurlam (now Mercer International).

PROJECT UPDATES

Ribbon cut for Science Collaboration Centre at Chalk River Laboratories

Broccolini plans second mixed-use condo for downtown Toronto

Businesses step up to help complete charity construction project 

Bird Construction chosen to build $280M worth of post-secondary facilities

Justice building project paused after lone bid is $30M over budget

WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

PHOTOS: 🚧 Contractors arrested after digging through the Great Wall of China 

READ: 🌍 Italian researchers 3D print homes using raw earth

TWEET: Calgary mayor calls special meeting to address the worsening housing crisis 

PHOTOS: 🔩 Montrealers line up for souvenir Champlain Bridge rivets

READ: 🏗️ Fredericton courthouse bid comes in $30M over budget

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Here’s to a great rest of the week!