🧠 Thinking outside the jobsite

Good morning! Button mashers, rejoice. It turns out video games aren’t always a waste of time. Riga, Latvia has created an automated city model based on available geospatial data in Minecraft. Officials hope the project will spur young people’s interest in architecture, urban planning and STEM careers.

My grandma isn’t much of a gamer but she has honed her skills with the sewing needle. To show her support for the newsletter, she crafted a SiteNews quilt.

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- Russell Hixson, editor

MARKETS

*Stock data as of last market close; currency, oil and crypto data as of 11:00PM ET Jan 23rd.

Economy: Canada’s inflation rate is hitting the brakes thanks to gas. The rate slowed to 6.3% from a year ago in December. This is below the 6.4% experts expected and the 6.8% seen in November. Statistics Canada says December was the third-straight month where the annual rate of inflation fell from the prior month. While gas costs dropped, mortgage costs continued to go up and food prices remain elevated. The consumer price index fell 0.6% on a monthly basis, the largest monthly decline since April 2020.

THE BIG STORY

Recruitment campaigns go beyond the jobsite

B.C.’s construction industry wants people to know what the life of a tradesperson is like after work. The BC Construction Association (BCCA) is in the middle of a major campaign highlighting tradespeople who hike, ski, climb, ride motorcycles and more. The #BuildersLifeBC campaign is being pushed out on the radio, TV, social media, billboards, bus shelters and public transit.

As Andrew Mercier, B.C.’s new minister of state for workforce development, put it in a recent interview: "If you want to buy a house, get into the skilled trades."

Follow the money: That’s just one side of the effort. The association received $21 million from the federal government to support small and medium-sized employers who take on apprentices. Employers will receive $5,000 for hiring or registering any new first-year apprentice in one of the 39 Red Seal trades, plus an additional $5,000 if the worker self-reports as a woman, new Canadian, LGBTQ2S+, Indigenous, a person with a disability or a visible minority. There are no strings attached to how employers spend the money. So far, the association has handed out more than $1 million.

Why it matters: Construction has a serious perception problem. A recent study by tool manufacturer Stanley Black & Decker showed that while 85% of young people and 94% of parents think that skilled trade work is a good quality career option in general, less than half of youth have ever considered a skilled trade career and far fewer (16%) are very likely to consider a skilled trade career. The study noted the biggest reasons were misunderstanding the financial benefits, believing they don’t have the right skill set, lack of exposure to tradespeople and the industry being mostly male.

Going deeper: Alberta is trying to attract workers from across the country by showcasing the region’s affordability, amenities and low taxes; and it appears to be working. Ontario celebrated one year of Skilled Trades Ontario, a new crown agency created to streamline the trades system and promote trades careers.

NEED TO KNOW

The week's headlines

🏠 The latest data from the National Association of Realtors shows U.S. home sales have hit a 12-year slump. According to the report, existing home sales dropped 1.5% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.02 million units last month. This marked the 11th straight monthly decline in sales, the longest such stretch since 1999.

👷 The federal government is extending and expanding a program that creates a pathway to permanent residency for construction workers. The program allows workers in the Greater Toronto Area who have overstayed work permits or visas to become permanent residents.

🦺 EllisDon is launching a new initiative to ensure all genders and body types have gear that fits. The Fit Your Frame campaign aims to provide construction safety vests to women and gender-nonconforming persons whose frame and body type don’t feel comfortable in the more common vest sizes and styles.

✅ The University of Toronto is putting researchers and the construction industry together to come up with sustainable infrastructure solutions. The school believes that by including the industry in the process, the insights gained through their research can more easily be applied.

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PROJECT SPOTLIGHT

Toronto tower design embraces history

Brick by Brick: KingSett Capital is taking another crack at its 510 Yonge Street tower project in Toronto. BDP Quadrangle has reworked the 59-storey condo tower’s design into what would be the tallest brick exterior building in the city. The building has 40,600 square metres of space and over 98 per cent of it would be residential and just over 775 square metres would be retail at the bottom. The proposal is still awaiting approval.

PROJECT UPDATES

Ellisdon is dismantling the site cranes for the M-City project in Mississauga

Work is complete on the 26-storey Sun Tower 2 in Burnaby

PCL is making progress on the Wawanesa insurance company HQ in Winnipeg

Crews have broken ground on Simcoe County’s new Stayner Care Centre

Tunneling work has begun for the 7.8-km Scarborough Subway Extension

WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT

TWEET: 🤖This construction robot will blow your mind

READ: 🌱 Everything you need to know about bamboo building

READ: 🙁 New research shows Canadians are pessimistic on the economy

LINKEDIN: 🎓 Are colleges ready to combat AI essays?

READ: 📈 Algorithms are boosting the design and development process

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