A Creative Eco Builder

Welcome everyone to Construct Canada today. I'm Michael Mancini, Editor-in-Chief of CanadExport, the e-Magazine of the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service. Today, well simply only today I'll be speaking to a variety of Canadian companies and experts live here at Construct Canada. So I invite you to stop by and listen to what our experts and entrepreneurs have to say about this booming sector and what the future holds as world economies begin to struggle. I also invite you to learn more about the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, Canada's most comprehensive network of international business professionals. So go to tradecommissioner.gc.ca for more information. And while you're there don't forget to subscribe to CanadExport, our free twice monthly magazine. Now I'd like to welcome my next guest, Mr. John Godden, president of Clearsphere/AlphaTec Consulting and Construction. Thanks for taking the time today. Thank you. So first of all tell me about your company. I'm actually, I describe myself as a recovering builder. But I'm actually helping larger production builders build sustainable houses in the GTA. And working with one builder in particular, providing consulting services and testing to actually certify 34 lead platinum homes in Newmarket. Wow. And that's sort of put me into this sort of international forum because we have lots of builders from other countries that are interested in seeing what we have to show them. So how challenging is it to teach builders to build green, how big of a challenge is that both here in Toronto and internationally? Well the, the big challenge with builders is actually the way the brains work. They're very, very cost conscious and very many of them work in competitive markets. So they're really, they really haven't explored the idea of selling energy as an upgrade. And they perceive a lot of the changes they've made to standard housing as being a cost. And I'm trying to convince them that it's a real benefit for their customers and it is a whole education process. Many of them have been building the same way for 30 years, and I'm telling them it's about time to look at building something a little bit different. Right. Tell me about some of the opportunities that you found internationally? I'm working on a national committee to bring the lead for home standard to Canada. So I've done quite a bit of work across the boarder with USGBC and Canada Green Building Council. And they really are at sort of driving force for unifying what's happening in North America. And I'm very interested in actually engaging builders to participate in systems that are standardized across the continent. How different is the challenge when sort of trying to I guess teach, work with builders in the States versus builders in Canada, are they more open at this point to this sort of, this innovation? Well I think, actually when we, we have a long history in Canada of having progressive programs like R2000. So when I do go down to the States I'm a little bit of a celebrity. Yes. When I wear my R2000 builder shirt. They're actually quite open because in their marketplace they've built almost 700,000 Energy Star homes and our Energy Star standard in Canada is quite, quite a bit more aggressive then theirs. So a lot of the work I do is actually convincing builders to offer a base level and sort of package these different offerings to home owners. So the American builders that we had up from Michigan in the trade mission about three weeks ago are very interested in having me go down there and sort of show them how to, to come up with an integrated program. Wow, and so what are the challenges there, what are the challenges in the US market for you? It would probably be standards. But again some of their, their states are very, very progressive in terms of their energy efficiency legislation. So ironically it's quite easy. We just really have to focus on getting the right people in the right room and we can move the agenda forward. Now we're obviously in the midst of an economic downturn if you can call it that. How has this, that situation affected your business in, both in the States and here in Canada? The business is up for me because I'm helping builders differentiate their product from other sort of base level offerings. So it is all about market share, people are really concerned about that, and the regular approach in an economic downturn is to slash prices, give away free mortgages or appliances, but a lot of my builder clients are actually looking at offering houses that are much better. And probably the best analogy of that is hybrid cars. So many of them realize they can't sell GM Yukon houses anymore, SUV's. They've got to think about offering a smaller house with more energy efficient futures. Wow. How important, I mean just to focus a little more on the international aspect of your business which you're in the States at this point, do you see your company venturing even beyond the United States to other parts of the world as well? Well we, we actually have a relationship with an American organization called RESNET which is the Residential Energy Services Network and they actually have made arrangements and have agreements with Singapore. They're starting to move out and it's basically dealing with standardized ways of measuring energy performance in houses. So I could see myself very soon you know being in Europe or in places like Singapore or China. Right, right. I just want to go back to something you said before about the different standards. You said that there are different standards in the States then there are in Canada, how tough is that in terms of managing, managing the challenges between different standards and different countries? We're dealing with translation. It's actually quite easy cause and with all respect to domestic builders, there's not a great understanding of what the standards are. So there's a whole opportunity to go out and teach them afresh. But things like ashray(ph) are universally applicable. So I think that's the whole trick is we're trying to, we're trying to get a standardized approach to building the house. And if we come up with something in North America I'm sure we can sort of roll that out into the rest of the world. But I'm working a lot with Lead and it is very flexible to sort of work across the border and to make things mesh. If you had some, some words of advice for other Canadian companies looking to engage with builders, and to really sell the idea that green is, you know it's not about an added cost, it's really an investment and the greatest differentiator at this point, what advice would you offer? Well I think definition is really important. There's even at the show there's many different definitions of what people are calling sustainable. So I think the real challenge is to get a definition that's easy for everybody to understand and participate in. So there's a lot of experimentation right now, so even leads for me on a house is a real challenge. Because I'm, I'm obviously working with the builder and you know the process on the ground, building the house is not necessarily the rating system, right. Right. And house is an organic thing, we've got people working on it. The most important thing is all of us sort of engaging each other to do what we can for sustainability. Thanks for taking this time today. Thank you.