October 17, 2008

Canada risks losing its edge in building envelope technology, experts fear

DON PROCTER

correspondent

Canadian building envelope experts are in demand in the U.S. and for good reason. Their reputation as experts in the field has gone unchallenged worldwide. But experts in the field say there is concern that Canada may be losing its edge in building envelope technology.

Going back to the 1980s, through organizations like the National Research Council Canada (NRC), Canada has set the bar high in building envelope technology. But the country might be knocked off its pedestal in the next few years if it doesn’t pull up its research bootstraps, say some pundits.

John Straube, principal of Kitchener-Waterloo-based Building Science Corporation, is widely recognized as one of the top guns in the field in Canada and the U.S. He says that the demise of the NRC’s building research division took some of the wind out of the council’s research sails into building science.

Furthermore, the way the NRC’s Institute for Research in Construction (IRC) is set up it acts as a “major competitor” to universities for building science research money.

Straube adds that “hard building science” isn’t a mandatory subject in architectural and engineering programs at most of Canada’s universities. “The vast majority of grads today and in the past have almost no exposure to building science.”

Training and education is not at a standstill in Canada, however.

Ryerson University offers a Masters program in building science and Burnaby’s B.C. Institute of Technology also provides a comprehensive program on the subject, explains Straube, who is a professor in the Building Science Education program at the University of Waterloo.

“We’re producing a lot of people in Canada,” he says. But the demand for good people outstrips the supply.

Making matters worse, U.S. firms draw many of Canada’s best building envelope specialists because they pay better than their Canadian counterparts — often 20-50 per cent better, those in the field say.

Laverne Dalgleish of the Winnipeg-based Building Professionals Consortium says his company’s business south of the border has increased exponentially since 2001 when Massachusetts adopted the U.S.’s first energy code that regulated air barriers.

It is largely a duplication of Canada’s version through the 1995 National Building Code.

BPC’s experience is not unusual — other Canadian building envelopes specialists are heading south for work and some of them returning.

Gary Osmond is a case in point. He moved from Hamilton, Ont., earlier this year to take a job with Henry Company in Virginia.

While Bob Rymell sees more Canuck firms working in the U.S., he doesn’t expect that there will be a mass exodus any time soon.

The president of Innisfil, Ont.-based RBS Consulting Engineering Group Inc. says Canada has a lot of senior and junior building envelope specialists but few in the middle.

“Soon a lot of those seniors are going to be retiring. There will be a lot of [jobs] to fill here.”

About 75 percent of RBS’s building envelope work is in Ontario and about 10 percent (analysis and plant reviews) is in such U.S. cities as Boston and New York.

He says the litigious nature of the U.S. makes it important to double and triple check your work. “You make sure whatever you write, how you describe your project, is very specific, very accurate.”

Rymell believes that as long as Canada sees construction growth there will be room for building science research, with support coming from major industry players.

Straube has a different perspective. “In some ways we are in danger of losing our advantage (over the U.S.) because of the efforts that Americans are applying to the building science area.”

What’s more, the method of getting new building materials approved for use across Canada through the Canadian Construction Materials Centre (CCMC) can be so time-consuming and expensive that major manufacturers are choosing to forego Canada for the U.S. where the approvals process is straightforward and less costly, says Straube.

In a worst-case scenario, he points out that a product used in other countries for years might not get approval in Canada until it completes years of testing by the CCMC. That testing is often paid for by the manufacturer. In the U.S. a manufacturer might simply have to verify the product testing outside the U.S. in order to get approval for use in the states.

Will Canada face a crisis as a result of a migration south?

Straube says Canadians have been living with “rotting, leaky buildings that sometimes smell and always use too much energy for 30 or so years.” So what’s new?

“We’ve managed to build buildings for decades without mandatory building science knowledge. It’s been a low-level disaster for as long as I’ve been looking at it.”

On the positive side, he says the owners, architects, engineers and insurers are starting to recognize that there is a better way to build buildings. “There’s a natural organic growth, not driven by government, to do better buildings.” Initiatives such as LEED are major factors in the move to design better buildings.

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